The Wrong Side of the Grave
by Lhyrre
Summary: When I was seven years old, a witch-woman awoke all of my past lives for some purpose of her own. However, past memories from a particular life have made this entire situation way more complicated than it had to be. Now, I'm stuck between death-obsessed missing-nin, nosy pre-teens, the apocalypse, and a terrifying old lady out for revenge. Being a fish was better than this...
1. Prologue: The Drowning

DISCLAIMER: The reincarnation in this story is not supposed to follow any religion particularly. I drew from several different reincarnation traditions, and invented details where it suited this story. Enjoy!

Prologue: The Drowning

 _ _The men from another life imagined that plants were the bottom of the chain of reincarnation, but truly, there is nothing more fulfilling than the life of the tree – there is no hunger and little pain. Roots grow out to embrace your brothers and sisters and your branches entangle like the caresses of a lover. The trees speak to each other over centuries as you grow in the language of the world. A year in the life of a man is but a day in the life of the tree. You nurse a thousand thousand lives within your body and hold within yourself the ability to see a millennium. You are man, woman, and child. Being a tree is, perhaps, the closest a soul can come to being a god.__

* * *

I hesitate to record these experiences. The things that I write here many will deny and others will exploit, but as the soul passes away, I wish to leave some imprint on this earth that will swallow me and make me over in its own image.

Life is eternal. This, perhaps, is not a surprise to many of you. It was not a surprise to me, when I woke again. In his core, a man knows that his spirit never truly passes. But men expect that if they continue to live after death, that the person that they are, with their memories and loves and neuroses, goes with them.

It doesn't.

What I am is an abomination. The person that I was, in another lifetime, should have faded with the decaying of my flesh in the soil. My spirit continued, born into a new body with new loves and new problems – perhaps as an ant, toiling under the sun for a few years, perhaps as a tree to reach up to the sun with tiny leafy fingers for a few centuries. But I should not have remembered these things. And after my spirit had taken on and discarded enough selves that the human part of me was centuries forgotten, I was reborn again as a new self who could experience the world with new, worshipful eyes.

But it remains that I remember another life – many other lives. I remember being a fish flickering through the sea without an idea of life above the ground. In that life I knew only freedom and hunger, a furious cycle ended on a fisherman's hook.

I remember being a tree with leaves reaching up into the sky, living, like a god, a thousand years.

I remember being an elephant, a hard, painful life, chained to a tree and beaten for the fear of smaller creatures. Mourning my sisters when they died around me, and rejoicing when reunited with a daughter thought lost a lifetime ago.

I remember being a coyote, where I skulked and hunted around the edges of a dangerous world full of rushing technology, my eyes growing sharper in the darkness.

But most of all, I remember my human lives. If being a tree is to be a god, then to be human is to be a devil.

* * *

Umi woke me when Kiyoko was seven years old, the orphan daughter of fishermen in the ruins of Uzushiogakure. The old witch-woman had stayed in our village for ten years before she chose Kiyoko. She never told me why she chose Kiyoko, other than the fact that she was an orphan with no parents to miss her. But Kiyoko was far from the only orphan on this war-torn continent, and Umi could have had her pick of orphans, many of whom were faster and stronger than the shrimpy redheaded girl.

It was without ceremony. Kiyoko was mending her uncle's nets, fingers red and raw from the newness of the task to her. I still remember the newness of the pain and the stink of the nets, a smell both revolting and familiar. Umi spoke to her for a moment, and only asked one question.

"Child, do you remember who you are?" Her voice was as full of crags and grit as her sun-worn face.

Kiyoko was confused, but didn't put down the knot she was currently working on. "Who I am?"

And Umi put fingers as crooked as an ancient tree on the temples of a small girl with fish under her fingernails, and killed her spirit.

* * *

They tell me that I shook and screamed for days in words that no-one understood – that I snarled like an animal and froze for hours with my hands outstretched to the sun. I believe them, for my first memory that is not Kiyoko's is of the pain of blistered sunburn on my palms.

When I finally opened my eyes and asked for water, my throat was dry and my voice cracked like the old woman's. My aunt hovered on the edge of my fuzzy vision before disappearing and re-appearing with a cracked dipper full of water.

"Drink, child," she ordered, and I stared at her with wide eyes.

I drank, and closed my eyes to feel the water slide down my throat. A thousand years ago, or only a moment, I had been drinking coffee in the car. I had been holding a newborn baby in my arms, confronting the miracle of life for the first time. I was covered with dirt and soot to darken my already-dark skin, kneeling behind a tree and aiming a musket at flashes of bright red through the trees.

I was falling asleep after a lifetime of terror and the trainer's whip, eager for the blackness at the end of a life. I felt the flash of pain in my shoulder before I ran away to hide and meet my end. I was suffocating on a bed of ice, gills searching for water that would never come.

"Am I a child?" I asked fuzzily. "I thought I was dead?" My palms burned, blisters scraped open and scabbed over.

My aunt froze. "You are alive, Kiyoko," she said very gently.

My mind was full of confusion – of lives half-remembered and deaths re-lived. But I knew one thing, as sure as I could feel the pounding behind my temples and the burning in my hands. "I'm not Kiyoko," I said, the empty tin dipper clutched in my hands.

The tall woman's eyes went wide, but, with the steadfastness of a woman who lived at the mercy of the sea, she gently took the tin dipper from me and said, "Are you hungry, child?"

I looked down at my hands, burned and raw, and saw the child in them. "A little."

She left without a word. I leaned back on my pillows and stared out of the small window across the room, into the bluest sky I had seen in any lifetime.

* * *

I was confused for a long time after Umi came to kill Kiyoko. There were many memories that were hard to sort through – hard to separate from one another. My body was a shocking thing – it was built so differently from my last human life that I didn't quite know what to do with it. In a previous life, I had been blonde and softly built. This body was taller than I remember being at that age, with narrow hips and hard hands. It felt as though this body could swim forever in a way that that past body had never been able to handle.

The animal lives were not as complicated as my human lives, but the brutality of them shocked me. I had endured a few brutal human lives as well, but the farther back they were, the harder they were to remember.

But the question of __who__ I was remained cloudy. I continued to refuse Kiyoko as a name, since she never really got a chance to live. It felt wrong to use her name. My Aunt Fu gave up and simply called me "child," but my uncle, a man who had learned that life was one big joke, decided to try and re-name me.

"How about Junko? We always need more obedient children," he said as he led me out to the boats.

I rolled my eyes. Out here, next to the ocean, the world made a little more sense – my cousin Takahito noticed that I wandered less and spoke more next to the ocean.

Uncle Takahiro put a heavy, fishy hand on my shoulder. "Not a child, then? Just Jun?"

A smile crept across my face.

"There she is!" he crowed. "Does she have a name? Or is her name to terrifying to hear out loud?"

That terrible joke got a laugh. When compared to the vastness of the sky and the depth of the ocean, my own confusion felt less important, somehow. As if I could stop thinking.

 _ _Whap!__

My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden impact at the back of my head, like a very wet and sandy fist. Sand and water dripped down into my collar like an exodus of ants. I whirled around to see Takahiro with his hand already wrist-deep into the sand on the edge of the beach.

"Takahiro!" My uncle snapped.

Takahiro just grinned, and slugged another handful of sand at me.

With a speed I didn't know I possessed, I dodged, my own hand reaching down for a clump of orange in the sand with a habit that my body knew even if my mind didn't. "Hey, Takahiro!" I yelled, my voice sounding so strange echoing off the water and sand. Not my voice.

He turned around just in time to get a handful of crabweed to the face.

I didn't know it then, but I made a decision in that moment. Whoever I was, I was going to live.

After all, the best revenge is living well.


	2. Beneath the Shelter of the Leaves

Disclaimer: The reincarnation depicted in this story draws from several different traditions and religions, with details made up to suit the story. It is not meant to be an accurate representation of the religious beliefs of any group.

Hidden in the Leaves

 _ _It took a long time to apply the henna for the wedding, with dark loops and abstract flowers creeping almost up to my shoulders. My mother and cousins sat for hours with little soft brushes that tickled horribly, tracing blessings down to my fingernails.__

* * *

The sunlight traced abstract shapes on the ground that tripped along as lightly as the strum of strings. I imagined that every time I stepped in one, it trilled in a certain note, and that I could play a symphony of light. The road stretched ahead endlessly as I followed behind Umi.

It had been five years since she had arrived again to take me from my Aunt and Uncle, claiming that she could help me with my "condition." To my family's credit, they didn't want to allow me to go. I was a decent hand on the fishing boat, even if Aunt Fu was fairly sure they would never be able to marry me off.

But in the year I stayed with my family, I still had made very little progress in sorting out my confusion. Instead, I drifted through life like a sleeping corpse. I had my moments of clarity, by the ocean, but there were more moments when I woke and could not remember which language to speak, or which name to respond to. Even worse, though, were the mornings when I woke entirely certain I was someone long-dead, living in a world that had long since passed into memory.

* * *

 _ _It was one such morning that Umi came again. No one had connected her to Kiyomi's mental collapse nearly a year before, so she was still welcome in the village. I was sitting in front of my breakfast, earnestly asking in English if the dishes in front of me were gluten-free.__

 _"_ _ _Does this have any soy sauce in it?" I asked Aunt Fu, gesturing at the dishes spread before me. "And did you fry the shrimp in the same pan as the fish cake?"__

 _ _I still remember how helpless Aunt Fu's eyes looked in that moment. She picked up the pair of wooden chopsticks and pressed them into my hand. "Just eat, child."__

 _ _My hands remembered how to use the chopsticks, even if I was in another universe. "If I eat something with that it will make me very sick!" I exclaimed, anger beginning to gather on my brow. I soothed it, with the thought that you must be polite to your hosts.__

 _ _Aunt Fu looked at me for a moment, and just put her head into her hands.__

 _ _The knock at the door came at the right moment. Aunt Fu took her chance to dash to the door, to avoid dealing with Katherine for the moment.__

 _"_ _ _Oh, obaa-san!" I heard Aunt Fu say politely. "Can I do anything for you?"__

 _"_ _ _Let me see the child," I heard Umi growl. Her voice went through me like a knife.__

 _ _And, at her voice, I remembered where I was. I remembered that Katherine was dead, and that she had lost everyone she loved. That her husband was gone, her child was gone, that her parents and brother and sister were out of reach forever. It was like someone had bored a hole in the bottom of the world, just so I could fall through it.__

 _ _I heard Aunt Fu and Umi speaking, but I was too busy trying to remember Vic's hands on my face and in my hair, and hating myself all the more when I remembered.__

 _ _I remembered the feeling of the ring on my finger, and my hands went to that finger as if I would feel the smooth ridge there –__

 _"_ _ _Let's get a look at you, child," came the gruff voice. My own very wet eyes flashed up to meet the rheumy blue ones of the old crone.__

 _"_ _ _What are you doing here?" I hissed, pressing myself back into the wall as far as it would allow me to go.__

 _"_ _ _Well, you've made a royal mess of yourself, haven't you," Umi snapped.__

 _"_ _ _You did this to me," I whispered. "You killed Kiyoko." The knot of hair at the nape of my neck pulled uncomfortably as I pressed up against the wall.__

 _"_ _ _And I can help fix it," came the matter-of-fact response. Her hands, the same hands that – oh god – had killed Kiyomi, reached for my temple again.__

 _ _I screamed bloody murder.__

 _ _Aunt Fu rushed into the room. "What are you doing!" she said, pulling me away from Umi.__

 _"_ _ _Nothing yet," Umi said, holding up her empty hands. "But I may be able to help her. We will have to make her sleep first."__

 _ _Aunt Fu was looking more suspiciously now, and I cowered under her arm. I was grateful that I was still small enough to cower. "I think I'm going to ask you to leave," she said firmly.__

 _"_ _ _I'm not here to hurt her." Umi stood. "I'm here to give you your niece back."__

 _ _Aunt Fu stopped. When I looked up into her face, the naked hope was so obvious that I knew I had lost.__

 _ _I watched Umi's crooked hands creak into several handsigns, and then she locked eyes with me. "Sleep," she intoned.__

 _ _Sleep washed over me like the tide.__

* * *

 _ _When I awoke, it was the first time that I had a separate sense of self in a long, long time. Darkness had long since fallen, and a silver triangle of moonlight fell on the floor of my bedroom. The side of my face stung, though, like a thousand buzzing points of electricity. I lifted my hand to my temple, but found only smooth skin there. "What did you do?" I accused, my eyes finding the old woman in the darkness.__

 _"_ _ _Since you obviously couldn't sort out your mind yourself, I had to do it for you. The chakra seal will dissolve in a few years."__

 _"_ _ _Chakra seal?" I asked. It sounded vaguely familiar, in the way lullaby might.__

 _"_ _ _You have much to learn, child," Umi said. "And, unfortunately, it seems that you are one of the few capable of learning it."__

 _ _It was so difficult to think past the pain in my temple. "Why did you do this to me?"__

 _"_ _ _Not everyone has lived a past life yet, child. And you are the first yet to have survived the awakening."__

 _"_ _ _You mean you did this to other children?" I curled up in the bed, facing away from the woman.__

 _ _Umi paused. "I watched you for a long time, child. You were the first in a very long time to be… suitable."__

 _"_ _ _And what has made me so 'suitable'?" I asked, my hands unconsciously moving in a gesture not of this time.__

 _ _Umi shrugged. "Your stubbornness, perhaps, has not changed from one life to the next."__

 _"_ _ _You still haven't told me what you've done," I snapped.__

 _"_ _ _Just a simple technique. I placed a seal on your past lives. You will as much time as you need to sort though each life you lived, from the last to the first. In this way, you will be able to retain your sense of self." Umi stared hard into my eyes with her hard blue ones, like ice. "This technique is only necessary for those who are weak-minded, you realize."__

 _ _I looked away from her. "How many lives did you live?" I somehow knew that she was like me. I felt it deep inside of myself, almost as if I could see the shadow of another woman behind her, standing tall and beautiful.__

 _ _In just a second, she was up and out of her chair, her gnarled hand curled around my chin. "How did you know that I remember my past life?"__

 _ _I froze. She grabbed harder. "I j-just assumed-" I stuttered, the intensity of her gaze turning me back into the child I was supposed to be.__

 _ _She released me, but her gaze was suspicious.__

 _ _Aunt Fu came back into the room at that moment, and embraced me in a rare moment of affection. "Kiyo-chan," she said, throwing around a nickname I hadn't heard since Kiyoko's parents died. "Are you alright?"__

 _"_ _ _I'm okay," I said quietly. "But Kiyoko is not."__

 _ _Aunt Fu looked confused, and sadness crashed across her features like a peal of thunder.__

 _"_ _ _From now on," I said quietly, "My name will be Mimir."__

 _ _I locked eyes with Umi. "Kiyoko is dead."__ And you killed her, __I thought.__

* * *

"Remember, when we get to Konoha, your last name is Uzumaki," the old woman snapped. "And remember that we have a __job__ to do."

I ran a thumb under the strap of my pack, readjusting it for the thousandth time that day.

"You've never explained why I have to be an Uzumaki for this to work," I said, knowing the answer would be futile.

"Konoha was the last ally of the Uzumaki," Umi said, her cane making a steady __thump__ every couple of steps. "Bearing the name of Uzumaki will give us status in the village."

"It will also make us noticeable," I argued. "And that is __never__ a good idea."

Umi stopped in the middle of the road. "I don't remember giving you a choice, Mimiru."

"Mimir," I corrected automatically.

"Rather arrogant, naming yourself after a god," Umi sniffed, hobbling ahead at a brisker pace. From what I had been able to extract from her, in more amenable moments, was that she had not remembered her past life until much later in her life, and her tongue had not grown flexible enough to handle foreign syllables. To most of this world, 'Mimir' quickly became 'Mimiru.'

It was futile to contradict the old hag in these situations, so I shrugged and kept walking.

We walked along for another hour in silence. Despite her cane, I felt I had to take two steps across the dirt for every one of hers.

* * *

 _ _Umi took me away only a month later, explaining to my Aunt and Uncle that the healing process of the seal would take several years, and that she might as well take me in as her apprentice if I wasn't going to be any use to them.__

 _ _I know Aunt and Uncle loved me. But I know enough about people that I understood that they were horribly grateful to Umi for taking their mentally-disturbed niece off their hands.__

 _"_ _ _Don't go off with any strangers, child," Aunt Fu said in a clipped, tight voice. "And remember where your fishing knife is." She motioned to her calf, and averted her eyes so I wouldn't see any tears.__

 _ _Uncle embraced me tightly and secretly slid a full bag of coins into the back pocket of my pack. "If it's too much for you, Ki-" he stopped and took a deep breath. "Mimiru, then you come straight back here, do you understand?"__

 _ _I felt both horribly betrayed and entirely understanding. My aunt and uncle, though good people, had no real education or understanding of how to deal with a child who was not entirely functional. And though I was now much more cognizant than I had been, I was still not going to be easy to deal with for the next year.__

 _ _And I hated them for it, a little. Didn't I deserve the same amount of consideration as Takahiro got? Past lives or not, wasn't my life worth the same as everyone else's?__

 _ _And it was Takahiro who stood in front of me, fists balled. "You better come back, Kiyoko," he said, his face red from the effort of holding back tears.__

 _ _And I felt that tiny piece of me that was still Kiyoko rear up. "You bet, brat," I said, giving him a light shove.__

 _ _I wanted to tell them I loved them so badly. But emotion was not something that gruff fishermen taught their children in excess. "Stay healthy," I said instead.__

 _ _I wrapped a stubby hand around the rough leather strap of my canvas bag, and followed Umi into the forest.__

* * *

It was night when we finally came to Konoha, and the guards poked their heads out of their guard booth. "Papers?"

Umi grumbled, but produced the two sets of papers - one real and one fake, for me.

As the guard with the chuunin vest looked over the papers, his face transformed from one of boredom, to confusion, to incredulity. "Uzumaki?"

Umi shrugged. "It's my name. So what?"

"You're related to the __demon__ brat?"

Umi's face grew more crochety, like a knot in an ancient tree. "Only one alive that I'm related to is my brat of a granddaughter."

"I'm afraid I can't let you in, then," the guard apologized. "I think I need to send this to someone higher up on the chain."

"Since when did Konoha stop being a friend to the Uzumaki family?" Umi said, calmly, while hobbling up to the young guard, putting her face a scant foot from his.

He swallowed. "I'll go get my boss," he choked out, and ran away from Umi as quickly as he could.

I did my best imitation of a shy child, scuffing the toe of my shoe into the ground and attempting to draw some sort of face.

We didn't have to wait long. Apparently Umi's old woman glaring powers had increased since we last had to bully our way into a hidden village.

A man touched down in a swirl of leaves, his head wrapped in bandages. "My name is Ibiki Morino. I hear there's an anomaly with your paperwork?" he asked. __His voice could freeze lava,__ I thought. His face was covered with the most interesting patchwork of scars, all contorting to reveal just how stupid he considered this particular assignment. The guard behind him looked even more terrified than he had been before.

There was something about this entire situation that felt __so__ familiar almost in the way a past life might. But one of the first things I had realized was that I never had a past life in this country, or perhaps even in this universe. Strange.

It didn't phase Umi, though. "One of your useless guards took an exception to my family name. Since when did Konoha get in to the habit of turning away the Uzumaki?"

To the bandaged man's credit, he only flinched a little bit. "Don't try and fool me, grandmother," he snapped. "There are no more Uzumaki."

The guard opened his mouth as if to say something, but Ibiki flicked a finger and the guard swallowed whatever it was he had been going to say.

Umi stabbed her cane in Morino's face, missing his impressive nose by centimeters. "You can check my paperwork. You can check it twice. You can get one of those crow-eating Hyuuga to check for the Uzumaki seal. Some of us escaped. Some of those who escaped __came here."__ The unspoken 'dumbass' hung in the air between all of us like a silent fart.

Morino swiped a few of the papers from the guard and looked them over with a careful eye. "Well, they seem to be in order, but…" he made eye contact with me, and said, without a flicker of humor in his voice, "I'll have to get a crow-eating Hyuuga to look it over for an Uzumaki seal."

I had to hide a smile.

They brought us inside of the gates and into the gatehouse to wait for the aforementioned Hyuuga.

I held very still on the stool they sat me down on, self-consciously pulling at the red braid over my shoulder. It was much longer now than Aunt or Uncle would have allowed it to grow, and almost as long as it had been the day of Parvati's wedding.

After what felt like an age of me occasionally opening my mouth to speak and Umi glaring at me to keep quiet, man with white eyes and a forehead protector actually worn over his forehead came in and bowed politely. "My name is Tokuma Hyuuga. I was told there was a paper to inspect?"

Morino handed him the first sheet. "Is there a seal on this? You're looking for the…." he paused. "Does anyone here remember what the Uzumaki seal looked like?"

Morino didn't know. Hyuuga didn't know. The two clueless guards had no idea. The __other__ Hyuuga they brought in didn't know either. Neither did the next guards who came to replace the other two.

And that's how I met the Hokage for the first time.

We were all but dragged through the streets so quickly that a normal civilian would never remember the way. However, there was one part of my brain that cataloged the number of twists and turns, and I was reasonably sure I could repeat it later.

One of the guards flat-out scooped me up halfway through when my child-sized legs couldn't go adult-ninja fast, and I lost my mental map. A large, round building loomed ahead of us, and before we knew it, we were launched through a window and deposited on the floor in an imposing office with shattered windows.

 _No wonder the windows are broken,_ I thought.

We all sat in awkward silence for a moment before an old man in a white hat spoke. "Ibiki, what is this?"

Umi gave the equally old man a glare. "These young brats don't seem to remember the seal of Uzushiogakure. I thought Konoha had better education than this."

"Hokage-sama, I apologize - but Uzushiogakure has been destroyed for decades!" one of the stiffer-lipped Hyuuga said in protest.

The old man raised a hand to silence him. "I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding. Ibiki?"

Morino crossed his arms. "I'm afraid we cannot verify their papers, Hokage-sama."

" _ _None__ of you remember the seal of Uzushiogakure?" the Hokage said with angelic, dangerous patience.

The five ninja all averted their eyes and stayed very, very silent.

I was very conscious of the layer of travel dirt I was under. My normally coppery hair was auburn from dust, and I was fairly sure there was an actual crust of dirt behind my ears.

I swallowed.

The incredibly tense moment passed before the Hokage extended a hand. "Let me see the papers." he said, still in his too-dangerous voice.

Morino handed over the papers, and the Hokage scanned them, after folding his hands into a peculiar hand sign. We waited a tense five minutes while he turned the papers at very particular angles to examine every corner.

"They're authentic," he said, finally. He took a puff of his pipe and leaned back. "I'm sorry, Uzumaki-san," he apologized. "I hadn't realized that we had stopped training our guards to recognize the seal of the village that was our __greatest ally__." his voice went sharp and horribly dangerous at the last two words, and it looked as if the ninjas would have physically melted into the floor if they could. "We shouldn't keep you from your business. Tokuma, escort them to a local inn, and put their first night on Council payroll for their trouble."

Without a beat, Tokuma turned around and bowed to us deeply. "I apologize for my ignorance, obaa-sama," he said politely. "Allow me to show you and your granddaughter to an inn."

Umi sniffed and nodded, planting her cane in front of her. She turned, and in an unexpected move, bowed to the Hokage. "Thank you for giving us refuge, Hokage-sama," she said. "The Uzumaki do not forget a favor."

The Hokage nodded back, gravely. "Allow me to be the first to welcome you to Konoha, Umi Uzumaki." Then, with a friendlier sparkle in his eye, I recieved a nod as well. "And your name, child?" he asked.

"Mimiru Uzumaki, at your service," I quickly bowed at the waist, and practically ran from the room. Umi and Hyuuga-san were already waiting outside.

My ears were sharper than Umi's, though, and as the door closed behind it, I heard the Hokage say in a low voice, "The Uzumaki also do not forget an insult, Ibiki."

 _ _The Hokage understands Umi better than I thought.__

A/N: Hope you guys are enjoying this - If you read, I'd love to hear what you think in a review!


	3. Hurricanes

Disclaimer: This story is not meant to reflect any current religious ideas about reincarnation. I borrowed liberally and made up a lot to suit the story.

Hurricanes

 _ _My father's arm was strong around me and the smell of the sea was strong in my nostrils. "Remember, Ingrid," he said with no trepadition, "As long as you have the sky, you can never truly be lost." He picked me up and swung me up on his shoulders, carrying me into the great hall, where the weapons hung. I wrapped tiny arms around Fadir's head, balling tiny fists in blonde hair. He took a spear down off the wall, and gently unwrapped my tiny fists from his hair to run them along the wooden shaft. "And with a spear, no man will ever make you afraid."__

* * *

 _"_ You know, Umi, you could occasionally sell cures that actually work," I said as I painstakingly began a braid that would begin at the temple and coil around the back of my head to drape over the opposite shoulder.

"Then I would be a __threat__ , bratling!" Umi said cheerfully. "A harmless old woman selling raccoon dung and snake oil is much less suspicious." She, too, was preparing for the day, raking a shell comb through her thin white hair. "And today, you will help me sell!"

"I have to begin school today, Umi," I said. "I thought you wanted a competent fighter as an ally." Cautiously, I peeked at the back of her head.

"You can be an ally when you stop being useless," Umi snapped, good humor gone.

"I'm far from useless," I muttered under my breath. "You just never listen to me." I suspected, from comments and stories, that perhaps Umi had only lived one or two other human lives. After all, she had only grown crueler and crueler as I remembered more lives.

The moment she spun around, I knew it was a mistake. I wanted to run, but terror flooded my body like it was being flushed with acid. Her fingers formed three seals at lightning speed, and suddenly I couldn't move even if I wanted to.

I felt as if my soul was being torn from my body, almost - sinew by sinew. It was as if astral projection was the newest form of the iron maiden. I would have opened my mouth to scream, but my lips stayed stiff and trembling. I felt sweat begin to pour out of my forehead, and all of my muscles tightened to the point of pain. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes, and flowed down my face unchecked. My lungs wouldn't expand. It felt as if my heart would not beat.

After what felt like an hour but was likely only a minute, Umi released me.

I collapsed to the floor, drawing in huge, choking breaths.

"Remember your place, Mimiru." Her voice was colder than ice. "When you remember your last life, then perhaps you will be useful."

I was quickly enrolled at the local ninja academy, as I had been before, on other such trips. I had lifetimes of experience, but I had only been formally educated in two lives, one of which I could not really remember. But even one lifetime of formal education gave me an edge in mathematics, but the rote memorization that I faced at the ninja academy was entirely unlike my previous education at the feet of various tutors. Despite the adult mind, it was work to keep up with the unusual amount of genius classmates in this particular class.

Konoha was beautiful in a way entirely different from the many other places Umi and I had lived. It was absolutely carpeted in emerald, from the trees that seemed to drape over every roof to the ivy that was doing its best to cover up crumbling stone. The cobblestone under my feet was worn smooth from the feet of a thousand thousand people pacing it over the decades. It felt like a friendly, alive sort of place, where shopkeepers said hello to strangers and you almost felt as if the trees were watching over those scurrying underneath.

I picked my way over the cobblestone in my new ninja sandals, which felt so utterly __wrong__ for the task asked of them. What if I dropped a kunai on my foot? Even a layer of soft leather would be something. __I'll have to make new shoes after academy,__ I thought. __This uniform won't do. It provides so little protection from the elements.__ It was __very__ hot here, but there were ways to add protection without adding too many layers. In fact, as I watched adult ninja on the street, I saw many of them had added some sort of lightweight wrapped mesh shirts under their normal flak jackets.

So lost in my thoughts, I was caught utterly off guard by a small blonde whirlwind a full head shorter than me. "Ataaaaack!" shrieked the tornado, as I automatically jumped backwards to avoid his tackle.

"What the hell?" I said, ducking another punch. I wasn't faster than he was, but he was obviously telegraphing every move he made. Still, I was long out of practice, and my ninja education was… choppy, to say the least. I saw his arm coming, but couln't move fast enough to get out of the way. I went down __hard__ on the pavement, but with the ease of several lifetimes of practice, I shoved the pain out of the way. He had gone down with me, and I grabbed his arm to wrestle it across his back as I spun to sit on him. "What the hell is your problem?" I snapped, wrestling his arm up farther on his back.

The blond dramatically shouted, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I don't allow __intruders__ in __my__ village!"

"Well, I'm Uzumaki Mimiru and I have just as much right to be here as you do," I snapped, releasing him to stand up. "And __you__ are making me late to class." However, something about him felt like a fist to the brain. He seemed __so__ familiar. Also obnoxious. And why was his last name Uzumaki, anyway? The guard had said there __were__ no more Uzumaki. My new headache gave another good thump inside my brain.

I flounced off, hoping that my every step expressed my disdain. However, the throbbing pain in my hip and resulting slight limp probably meant that I looked like an insulted rooster or something. Surprisingly, the blonde boy didn't follow me, opting to sit in the dirt staring after me like I had just announced that I was a fish.

I tried to shake the dirt out of my braid as best I could before I ran into class a scant moment before the bell rang. I slung my well-worn sack onto the floor by my feet and tried to look attentive. Now that I had a moment to rest, I felt the back of my head throbbing as badly as my hip was. There wasn't much to do about it, though.

There was quiet snickering behind me as the teacher, a young man with a scar across his nose, began to read off names.

"Look at her __hair__ ," came a particularly saccharine voice. "Did she roll in the dirt?"

"And where did she get that bag? It looks like it went into the mud bath with her." came another, more timid voice.

I rolled my eyes and refocused on the teacher. Children were always cruel.

There weren't many children in the room, so I turned around and smiled sweetly at the girls behind me. They looked perfectly normal, but looking at them gave me the same feeling as listening to a frightening story. I shook myself inwardly. __They're children,__ I thought. "My name is Uzumaki Mimiru. What's yours?" Always best to engage with a bully before they decided you were a victim.

The two girls flushed violently pink, one girl nearly matching her striking hair. "Um, I'm Yamanaka Ino," said the girl with the slicked-back blonde ponytail. That pound of horrible familiarity struck again, making my headache worse.

The other girl, now pink from head to toe, muttered. "I'm Haruno Sakura. Pleased to meet you." Her name echoed in my brain, pounding as if trying to bore a hole in my forehead. I felt a tickle at the back of my neck, and -

I remembered.

* * *

 _ _Rage bubbled to the very edges of my thirteen-year-old body. "You can't stop me from watching Naruto, Mom," I said, fists clenched at my sides. "It's not wrong!"__

 _ _My mother's face was eerily calm. "I told you I don't like those Japanese cartoons. They're full of Eastern spiritualism. You have to be careful what you put in your head!"__

 _"_ _ _It's just fantasy!" I shot back. "It's not like it's__ real __or something!"__

 _"_ _ _The spiritual world is real, Kate! You can't give the devil a toehold! I said no and I mean no. Those Japanese cartoons will just melt your brain."__

 _ _I hated her. I loved her. Her words were like the manacles keeping me from my true happiness.__

 _"_ _ _You just want to ruin__ everything _ _!" I stamped away into my room and slammed my door.__

 _"_ _ _You keep that door open, young lady!" Mom's voice echoed down the hallway like stabbing knives I could never escape. "Unless you want me to get your father to take it off the hinges!"__

 _ _With the maximum amount of passive-aggresiveness, I cracked the door open.__

 _"_ _ _Did you hear me?" she shouted from the kitchen.__

 _"_ _ _It's__ open _ _!" I yelled back. I threw myself on the bed and squeezed my eyes shut, reflecting on the unfairness of the world.__

 _ _But long after everyone slept that night, I crept out of bed. I crept down the hallway as silently as a cat, through the kitchen and laundry room into the schoolroom, where the school computer was kept.__

 _ _My heart beat in my throat as I pressed the button for it to turn on. The whirring of the cooling fans sounded as loud as a passing train in the utter silence of the sleeping house, and fear stretched every second into a thousand years.__

 _ _When the cheerful blue screen popped up, I tapped a certain key many many times until the computer booted into Safe Mode. This was the only way I had found to bypass the parental lock and activity tracker that Mom and Dad had installed on all of the computers - but I had to be especially careful which sites I visited. If there was a virus, I would be grounded for a thousand years, probably.__

 _ _Quickly, fingers flying, I navigated into a page to watch the beloved anime. I didn't like lying to my parents, but I wasn't doing anything__ wrong. _ _After all, I wasn't neglecting my schoolwork too much by staying up this late, was I?__

 _ _Excited, I settled into the comfortable black chair, plugged in my headphones and allowed the episode to start.__

 _ _This lasted only six months before my parents found out.__

 _"_ _ _Katherine Easter Adams!" Mom hissed from between her teeth. "You have only been doing half of your math work__ all year _ _!" She slammed the offending sheets in front of me. On one side was the first half of the math work from yesterday's lesson, and on the other was the second half of the math work from today's. She had been allowing me to check my own work for half of the school year.__

 _"_ _ _Ever since you started watching those devil cartoons, all you do is sneak off to watch them!" she continued. "It's like you're an addict!"__

 _ _This time, though, I couldn't argue back. Terror had replaced the righteous indignation that usually followed one of Mom's 'this new thing is of the devil' speeches. I knew, in the very bottom of my soul, that I had done something unforgivable.__

 _ _Then, she calmed down. "We will talk more when your father comes home," she said, and walked away from me.__

 _ _Until this moment, I had never seen my father so angry. I felt like I could literally see the anger rising off of him in tendrils. "You are not allowed to watch or read any of these cartoons for a year," he said, slamming his hand down on the counter. "I have never, ever been so disappointed in you. It will take a long time to earn back the trust you have lost."__

 _ _I wanted to melt into the floor.__

 _ _But I couldn't give it up. Mom and Dad said no watching and no reading, but they didn't know about fanfiction. How could they? They were old. So I turned to fanfiction in the dark, at the library, anywhere I could get it.__

 _ _Still, after that year, I never seriously watched anime again. Even if I intellectually knew that it was harmless, that sense of guilt and terror would follow it for the rest of my life. Only later would I realize that all of their anger and trepidation came from the fact that I was neglecting my school, and learning to lie like it was a foreign language. And even though I know this, I am afraid.__

* * *

When I woke, I felt more confused than I had in almost five years. " _ _Where am I?"__ I asked, sitting up.

"Don't sit up!" came Iruka-sensei's voice.

With a rush, the seal burned in my temple, and I remembered where I was. I laid back down on the hard pallat. It felt like the wooden bench, and I quickly realized I was behind the teacher's desk. "S-sorry Iruka-sensei. What happened?"

Iruka-sensei turned back to the class. "Begin your worksheets, class, while I tend to Mimiru-kun." He turned back to me. "You just passed out, Mimiru-kun," he said, hands fluttering over me as if he was afraid to check me for injuries. "And Sakura-kun said she saw blood on your neck. If you will allow me to examine?"

I nodded.

His hands were strong and callused as they felt at the back of my head. __I can't believe I fainted in public,__ I thought as his fingers carded through dirty hair with clinical methodology. __I haven't done that in years.__

Then the wheels really started to turn. __Did I really watch a cartoon called__ Naruto __in Katherine's life? That can't be real. It must be a coincidence.__ I winced as the fingers found the scrape under my hair.

Iruka's hands came away just damp with blood. "Why didn't you tell me you were hurt, Mimiru-kun?" he scolded, fishing under his desk for a first-aid kit. "Head wounds are the most dangerous!" He paused. "How did you get hurt?"

I shrugged. "Some blond kid knocked me over and accused me of being a spy or something."

I saw something click in Iruka-sensei's head. "That brat hasn't been to class for three days now… he must have missed her first day," he muttered under his breath. The world spun again, and for a moment, a stylized cartoon was superimposed over Iruka-sensei's face, complete with matching scar. I stared, stunned, and then shook my head to dispel the image.

The seal burned again, and I raised three fingers to my temple and made a half-ram seal with my right hand. With a trickle of chakra, the seal calmed.

Iruka turned around, suddenly carrying a terrifying amount of bandages.

I shrunk back in my chair. "It's not that bad, Iruka-sensei." __Where did he get them?__

"Head wounds are very serious!" he chided as his hands blurred into action. When he was finished, my head resembled a badly-constructed magpie's nest, with wiry reddish strands pointing everywhere. "Now here is your worksheet. Go write down all of the basic hand-signs and the elemental uses of each!"

Somewhat dazed, I headed back to my seat.

* * *

Three days of class later, and I had managed to find out three things.

1: Naruto Uzumaki was in this class.

2: The entire class universally despised him, with the exception of a couple of lazy boys and one teacher.

3: He __seriously__ never came to class.

I hadn't seen a single whisker or blond hair for days. After the first encounter, I kept expecting him to pop out of the shadows or something. But after the fourth "Are you and Uzumaki __related?"__ question came out of the blue, I quickly divined that from what little I remembered of the TV show, that the entire village saw him as a troublemaker of ill repute.

Umi told me not to worry about keeping a low profile this time around, so I didn't bother denying the accusations. It seemed like too much trouble, and people would think whatever they liked anyway.

Finally, though, just when I had stopped expecting him, he appeared just as I sank my teeth into a ball of takoyaki while walking back from the market.

"Is your family name __really__ Uzumaki?" he said, without pretext. He planted his fists on his hips and his hair prickled with intention.

I chewed slowly, swallowed, and rolled my eyes up to the heavens for patience. "Yes."

"How can your name be Uzumaki! __My__ name is Uzumaki!"

 _ _Because Umi needs the support of village leadership for some reason.__ "I don't know, lots of people have the same last name. How many Nakamuras do you know?"

"But I've never met anyone with __my__ last name!" He was trembling, and I recalled, as if looking through a dark pond at a movie I'd seen once, that his family was dead.

"Doesn't mean someone doesn't have it," I responded. I took another bite of my takoyaki.

"That means we're family, right?" he demanded.

Well, he certainly didn't do subtle. I swallowed, and held out a shopping bag. "Help me carry my bags back to the apartment before my grandmother gets home. I want to be out of the house before she gets back." I wasn't sure what I was going to tell him, yet. But I didn't want to lie to him. That always ended badly.

"You have a __grandmother__ too?" Naruto said, eyes wide in shock. "Is she an Uzumaki?"

I nodded before I thought it through.

"Do we have to leave before she gets back? Can't we wait for her? I want to meet __two__ people with my last name!" His mood flipped as quickly as a light-switch. He reminded me of Katherine's little brother, a bit. The blond and obnoxious were defining factors of both. __Katherine had a brother,__ I thought. Another memory.

"No, you can't," I snapped. __Umi can't get her claws in Naruto,__ I thought. __He's too important to be controlled like that.__

Naruto's face fell as if I had told him his pet dog was going to die.

I found myself scrambling for words. "She's not… very nice," I managed. "If we are family, then she might try and…" I searched for the words that would make him listen to me, "Make you do things for her. Like give her money or stop you from being friends with someone."

Naruto was very quiet for a moment. "But no one will be friends with me anyway," he said. "So how could it hurt?"

I stopped in front of the gate of my house and handed him the rest of my box of takoyaki, taking the other shopping bag from his hand. "Trust me," I said, meeting his blue eyes seriously. "I'll see you at school, okay?"

I had a sneaking suspicion that he never went to school because there was no one to make him. I, at least, don't remember being a motivated twelve-year-old in any life.

He perked up. "You go to the academy?" he asked.

"I'm in your class," I said wryly.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow, Mimi-chan!" he said cheerfully before racing off.

I let myself through the gate and let my shoulders slump. "Mimi-chan?" I muttered under my breath as I let myself through the gate. "I'm not a poodle."

I put the shopping bag on the narrow countertop, and began to put away the groceries. I spent a lot of time trying to forget Katherine's life, even though I knew Umi's seal would not lift until I remembered her. But her human life was the closest, and for the closeness, the most painful. Other lives had the distance of memory, but sometimes I still turned around and expected to see Katherine's husband out of the corner of my eye.

My hands mechanically began the process of boiling water and preparing tea. __I have to remember this story,__ I thought as the water in the pot began to bubble. I dipped bamboo tongs into the tea jar and spread the flat leaves over the bottom of my glass. __Information in a ninja village is life or death, and I'm already deceiving everyone. I need to stop avoiding Katherine's life, or I will__ pay _ _for it in this life.__

I poured the water over the leaves and watched them dance against the white porcelain.

A/N: Sorry for the delay on this chapter, but I recently got married! And my in-laws were here so I was touring them around my hometown. It was a little difficult because they don't speak English!


	4. Regression

Disclaimer: My version of reincarnation is not supposed to follow any particular religion or creed - I borrowed heavily from several different traditions, with my own bits sprinkled in.

Trigger Warning for this chapter: physical abuse

Regression

* * *

" _The stars never change, my child," said Mother. "Look, there is Punarvasu, those two stars." I followed her long, dusky finger up the the stars. I snuggled closer in her arms. "Why do they have only one name?" I asked._

* * *

Horrible minute by horrible minute, I dragged myself around the city wall one more time. "Are you _sure_ this will improve my physical conditioning?" I asked, stealing a sideways glance at my blonde companion. My lungs ached and burned.

"I've been doing this since I was, like, four," Ino said with a dismissive flick of her ponytail. "And I'm the best girl in class!"

I didn't have enough breath to answer in more than a groan. The end of the wall was in sight, and I planned to toss myself face-first on the cool morning dew at the first opportunity.

Ino hadn't even broken a sweat. "Come on! Let's go around one more time!"

We rounded the corner, and I made my feet put one in front of the other. "Just-" I panted, "One more."

Ino laughed at me outright.

I chafed under her laughter. I had been around many of girls like her - girls that enjoyed helping and being friends with you just so long as you were a little less interesting, or a little less talented than they were. I knew that she would grow up into a woman who would truly care about those less fortunate than her, but the childhood self-centeredness was still a lot to bear.

Not to mention that she hadn't even talked to me until last month, when she and Sakura had their huge blow-up over Sasuke. Childhood was the worst.

Despite our obvious gap in level, I was finally pulling about even with the rest of my classmates. I was at least as good as Sakura or Shino, even though I couldn't keep up with the more athletic types in the class. But where the other low-physical classmates had incredible chakra control or family techniques to lean on, I was still struggling to express and control chakra outside of myself. Inside, to make myself move faster or hit harder, chakra was easy enough.

But outside? It felt horribly unnatural to push and form chakra outside of my body, as if I was trying to open a wrist with a knife. There was pain, but the worst part was the feeling of losing myself - as if I was bleeding soul instead of blood.

Logically, I knew that wasn't the case. Chakra was just an energy, not a repository of self. But it just felt so awful and foreign to push that energy outside of myself.

However, this chakra inhibition meant that I, unlike my other low-physical classmates, could not rely on chakra to help me graduate or keep me alive. I had to make it _physically_.

"One more time!" Ino chirped as the sun began to peek over the horizon. Her father, with his matching blonde ponytail, waved at us from atop Ino's house where he was doing some sort of salutation to the sun.

My legs were being dragged into the ground, like I had magnets attached to my feet. But if I could just keep putting them down in front of the other...

One step at a time.

* * *

By the time it was time for breakfast, I dragged myself to the nearest convenience store. I could have gone back to the house and prepared myself breakfast, but then I would have to talk to Umi. I was avoiding that as much as possible, these days.

I picked the plainest sort of rice triangle and a set of boiled eggs and put them down on the counter while I slid out my wallet.

"Four hundred and twenty yen," said the cashier.

I slapped the necessary coins down on the table, and took stock of my emptying wallet. I couldn't keep buying breakfast out like this. _Maybe I'll pick up a part time job somewhere,_ I thought. _I can't ask Umi for more money._

I sat at the counter, sweaty and awful, to eat my breakfast. Rice stuck to my fingers as I let the ache of my morning run rebound through me like echoes in a canyon. My chakra ached too, in a strange way.

I had to face the facts. It was going to be years before I could compete with my classmates. Doing things the long and slow way wasn't going to help me graduate. If I didn't graduate and tie my loyalty to the village with a headband, then I was going to be stuck with Umi forever. Once I graduated, though, and swore my loyalty to the village, I would have a job. She wouldn't be able to leave with me at a moment's notice - not without a lot of fuss from the village.

"Look, are you going to finish? Because, honestly, you _stink_ ," the cashier said from behind me.

"In a minute, Yuimura-san," I said politely. _I didn't say anything about you stinking of cigarettes, asshole._

It was still early to go to school, but maybe I could use the showers. I got up and disposed of the trash in the appropriate receptacles. "See you tomorrow."

"Not if you smell like dying skunk again," muttered Yuimura.

"I'll make it dying raccoon next time," I muttered as the doorbell chimed cheerfully behind me.

Surprisingly, I wasn't the first one at school. "Hello, Mimiru-kun," said Iruka-sensei. "You're here early."

"I always am, sensei," I said cheerfully. "May I use the showers? According to Yuimura-san, I smell like a dead skunk."

Iruka gave a bark of a laugh, like he was surprised to be laughing. "Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but…" he waved a hand toward the gym area. "Help yourself." He glanced at the clock on the wall again. "But you had enough time to go home, Mimiru-kun. Class doesn't start for another ninety minutes."

I shrugged. "I live on the other side of town," I lied blithely while slipping out the door.

In the girls' area of the gym showers, I stripped and stood under the warm water, letting it slide through my hair. My hair was thick enough that it was taking a few minutes for the water to penetrate all the way through. I ached all over, but it was a good ache. It made me feel more balanced than I had in a long time, more in tune with myself.

 _Maybe I'll try the clone technique again._ I thought. _After all, no one is around to see me fail._ I had been drilling hand-signs for months, so my fingers folded easily into the appropriate shapes.

"Bunshin no jutsu," I muttered.

I felt the chakra exit my body, and almost lost control of the shape of it because of the shock of pain. It felt almost like when Umi reached inside of me to try and wrest my soul from my body, sinew by sinew. But I was doing it to myself, which made it hurt in a different way. I bit my lip to keep myself from shaking.

A clone formed beside me, but it didn't look like me at all. First of all, it wasn't a prepubescent girl but a man - a taller, and darker man, with a tri-cornered hat tilted jauntily at an angle. I had imagined this clone to turn in a circle, and the man did so, with a look of confusion in his eyes. I felt rather than saw him reach toward the water, and stare in shock as it went through his hand.

I felt a tug on my chakra, like ripping, and the clone dissolved as I let out a short cry.

 _Not doing that again anytime soon,_ I thought.

I got up from the floor. I hadn't realized I had fallen. Soap was stinging in my eyes.

Mechanically, I washed the soap out of my hair and dried myself off. I pulled the change of clothes from my bag. A soft, well-worn t-shirt paired with some stretchy leggings was my preferred school outfit, and I paired them with the regulation sandals and socks. I was too tired to care about fashion at the moment - and Umi would wonder where I'd gotten the clothes.

* * *

After school that day, Naruto haunted me like a shadow. "Mimi-chaaan, let's go eat ramen!"

I rolled my eyes. "I have to study, Naruto. So do you, as a matter of fact."

"But studying is stupid!" he announced, dancing in front of me so I had to stop.

"No, you're stupid if you don't study," I shot back, stepping around him.

"I'm not stupid! Hey! Take that back," he shouted at my back.

"If you study you're not stupid," I said.

"I don't need to _study_ to be _smart_ ," he said, offence draining out of him like water from a sieve.

"Well, how are you supposed to learn anything without studying?" I offered.

"I already know everything, _dattebayo!"_

I rolled my eyes. "Let's go study at your apartment, Naruto," I suggested. "There's ramen there." _And it's free,_ I thought. My wallet was remarkably empty at the moment.

"Let's study at Ichiraku!" he said. "I want Teuchi-oji to see how smart I am!"

I gave up. "Fine." I didn't have to buy anything, right?

* * *

Even though days in Konoha were mostly temperate, the nights could dip chilly fingers down the back of your spine and hasten your walk back home. I definitely had not dressed warmly enough for the evening. I had just spent another surprisingly fruitful session with Naruto, working on penmanship. Now that he had decided to be 'totally awesome at seals, _dattebayo_ ,' he was starting to apply himself.

Umi had kept us in Konoha for almost five months now, and still hadn't told me why we came. After the initial fight, though, I didn't dare to ask her why we were there. Fear had settled into my bones at the idea of returning to that house while she might be home, and even though the cold was raising prickles on my bare skin, my steps slowed.

I had been a slave two times before this particular instance, and escaped only once. But Jed had been a far braver spirit than I. And though there was less back-breaking work involved in my current slavery, I had never before had a master that could reach inside of you and torture from the inside.

At least Jed's mind was always his own. It was Jed who my clone had become, I realized. I hadn't looked at him from the outside before, so it had taken me a while to recognize him. Mirrors weren't great in the 1770's.

I knew she was inside long before I ever stepped over the threshold. Even if the lock on the gate hadn't been left ajar, I could almost hear the rhythmic chants that her spirit seemed to shout.

"Where have you been?" Umi said the moment she heard the door open.

"School project," I said. "I was assigned to help tutor another student." A little lie, but close enough to the truth that if she tried to find out where I was, it wouldn't raise suspicions.

She was facing away from the door, a pot of something foul-smelling bubbling away on the stove. "It's time for another regression. You have not made more progress on Katherine, I assume?" She pronounced Katherine like _Kah-saw-lin_. She'd never gotten the hang of _th._

I had been hoping to avoid this. After all, Umi hadn't helped me regress in a year, at least. And whatever her plans were, I couldn't allow her to know that I might have some vision of this potential future. "I've been making progress," I said in the quietest voice possible.

"Not fast enough," Umi snapped. Her short grey hair was a wild halo around her head, which made her look like some aging fallen angel. "Come here, brat."

My feet felt as if they were made from stone, but somehow I found myself kneeling at the feet of her chair, the noxious fumes from the stove filling my nose. I could keep her away from those memories. It was such a small part of Katherine's life.

What was the most emotional thing that Katherine lived through? It was easy enough to redirect to emotional things.

It had been easy to distract in older lives, where life had been more obviously painful. Katherine had lived in a time of unparalleled prosperity and peace in her area of the world. She had faced very little physical hardship in her short life. But every person's life was difficult emotionally, in their own way.

Her crooked fingers found their way to my temples, and

 _pain_

 _pain_

 _pain_

 _be_

 _careful_

 _think_

* * *

 _Night fell, and I curled up on the blanket. "Are you sure we are allowed up here?" I asked, worried._

" _We'll be fine," Vanessa said, lighting the candle. "It's a beautiful night, isn't it?"_

Not as beautiful as you, _I thought. She was like an angel in this light, with the candle picking up all the copper tints in her curly dark hair. I wanted to touch them._

" _Let's tell stories!" she said._

Vanessa was like a flame, _I thought. Beautiful and entrancing, but dangerous to touch._

 _I shook myself. "Sure, you go first! You're way better than me." I could feel the roof shingles under the blanket, and I shifted to keep the ridges from digging into my hip._

 _I wasn't really listening to her words, at this point._ I'm not in love with her, _I told myself._ That would be wrong. I can't be that kind of person.

 _But all I wanted to do was touch her._

 _I pushed it down._

 _pain_

* * *

" _I'm sorry, Kathy. You're a cool girl, but you're just so… smart."_

 _It was a stab to the heart. "Well, what am I supposed to say to that?" I snapped._ Don't let him get to you. " _I don't need someone who doesn't appreciate me." I hung up the phone without listening to his sputtered apology._

 _There were tears in my eyes, but I blinked them back fiercely. I wasn't going to cry over a boy that stupid. So what were three wasted years? I had the rest of my life._

 _pain_

* * *

 _A body, laying in a casket. Gray curls arranged neatly around the head._ I wish it wasn't open, _I thought._ I don't want to remember her like this.

 _My head ached._

 _pain_

* * *

" _Anyone who believes in God is a psychopath."_

 _I thought we were friends._

 _pain_

* * *

I reeled back from Umi's hands and curled into a ball on the floor. "It's too much!" I shrieked. If anything, Katherine's memories felt more disjointed after that session, as if Umi had pried apart the layers of memory like layers of epidermis. My throat was raw. Had I been screaming? The memories themselves weren't horribly painful, but having her sift through them and peel bits away was horrible.

"You've always been weak," Umi said dismissively. "If you don't finish remembering and categorizing Katherine's life in the next month, then we will do that _every day_ until you do."

I couldn't get up from the floor. My workout in the morning had been horrible enough, and between my chakra blowout before class and the fact that today had been sparring day, I just couldn't move anymore.

It was like every part of me stung. Poison. Poison in my muscles and bones and mind.

"Finish making the medicine for me, brat. I'm going to bed." I heard, rather than saw her clump across the floor to the sleeping room.

I couldn't possibly move. I was an exposed nerve. The world was burning. I was in hell.

But if I burned the medicine, then it would give her another excuse. I propped myself up on the chair, somehow, and dragged it in front of the stove. I collapsed into it, my eyes just above pot level.

This particular medicine needed to be stirred as soon as it thickened, and it seemed nowhere near that. It would lose a lot of potency if stirred before then, so I had to wait.

And wait.

Sitting in the chair was agony. Even thinking hurt, like tapping fingers on a bruise.

But one thought burned and burned in the forefront of my mind.

 _I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE._

 _A/N: Hello all! Sorry for the wait, but I was moving back to South Korea with the new hubby. I can't promise really consistent updates, but I have no intention of stopping writing at the moment. So follow or favorite for updates. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to leave a review! It's really so encouraging._


	5. You're Always a Day Away

Disclaimer: The reincarnation in this story is not meant to be of any particular religion. I borrowed bits from several, and made up a whole lot.

You're Always a Day Away

 _I sank down in the theater seat, struggling to hold back tears. The music flooded through me as inevitably as the tide. I watched the young man hobble around a stage and use only his voice to bring the entire audience to tears. Mom reached around to wipe tears away from my face. When I looked up at her, she was crying too._

* * *

When I woke, I was lying on the floor next to my bed. The part of me that was Katherine tried to reach out for a nonexistent cell phone, but the pain that shot up and down my arm reminded me of who I was. The sun glared in the window like it was the Eye of Sauron.

I tried to stretch and winced. The physical pain wasn't terrible, but I had a headache like a small man was busily trying to pummel my gray matter into mush. I stood and checked my wavering reflection in the window. A haze of red hair and bloodshot eyes stared back at me, all interrupted by the imperfections in the glass.

One month.

I had a month.

I had survived worse before, right? Marcus had run in fear after a lifetime of service, knowing that there was no escape for him. Meera had lived a lifetime submitting to a man who thought about her less than his prize hounds without a whimper. I had been a hundred animals who lived lives in fear and died in terror. _It doesn't make it easier_ , I thought. _You never really remember how pain feels._

Umi was just one woman. True, her seal tethered me to her more surely than any shackle, but there was a way out of every situation. I had been making my plans to get away from her for years - and wasn't synthesizing this last life my way out?

I pushed the window open and stood on the window frame, leaning out to grab the ledge of the next window of the apartment above me. With a well-placed shove of chakra, I launched myself up two floors and onto the roof, and even almost landed on my feet for a minute before I overbalanced and fell backwards with a thump.

Okay.

While Umi thought I was at school, I was free of her, for the most part. But if I only had a month, I definitely didn't have time to go to class.

Well, Naruto hadn't gotten kicked out yet, right?

All I had to do was keep Iruka from trying to inform Umi of my absence.

Okay.

I pooled chakra to my feet and leapt to the next building, nearly falling over as I did so. Too much.

I needed somewhere to go, then.

I eyed the city wall.

I ran around it every morning, and no guard ever stopped me. As far as I could tell, as long as I was a known entity, I should be allowed to come and go as I pleased. There were plenty of 'unofficial' training grounds just outside the walls, but normally academy students were heavily discouraged from frequenting them.

But there was no rule _against_ it. And no-one would think to look for me there.

I leapt to another roof, and narrowly missed the edge, my arm flashing up to grab the edge. Not enough chakra then.

In only a few minutes, I found myself by the wall. It would be faster once I learned _shunshin,_ but I didn't have the time to spare now.

The first three training grounds I passed were occupied, and I skipped the next few to be safe.

The next field was too small.

Too large.

Too open.

Too watery.

After the seventeenth and final training field was too grassy, I settled for the first one that had been marginally okay, the sixth training ground.

Once I arrived, I settled on a convenient-but-not-comfortable stone ledge and dangled my legs off the edge. The edge cut into the backs of my knees, so I moved to the ground.

The ground was dirty, though, so I found myself on my feet and scanning the trees for one with non-rough bark.

 _I might be procrastinating._ The self-knowledge didn't exactly help me stop, but it added a little flavor of self-hatred to the pressure-cooker of feelings happening in my gut.

The seal on my temple twinged, as it usually did at a distance of this length. Nothing terrible, but it was a nagging reminder that leaving wasn't an option.

With a huff, I settled back on the ledge, but kicked my shoes off to tuck my feet under my thighs.

I closed my eyes, and reached for the nugget of confusion and memory that was Katherine's life.

"What's an academy brat like you doing way out here?" came a voice from behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, my feet finding purchase beneath me. "Um, what?" My hands immediately skipped to the pouch of academy-issue kunai at my waist. A separate part of my brain absently remarked that it was nice that academy training was having an impact on my instincts.

Standing at the edge of the field was a tall, voluptuously-built woman dressed in very, very little but a flasher's trench coat, a forehead protector, and strategically placed mesh.

"Shouldn't you be in class instead of crashing through the forest like a newborn donkey?" the woman remarked, inspecting her nails.

"I'm training," I said dumbly. _Crashing?_

"Sitting on a rock is training?" the woman said. "Are you training to be a monk?"

I crossed my arms. "Look, anyone can use these training fields," I bluffed. "Why do you care how I train?"

"I don't," came the dry reply. "But these fields are dangerous enough for chuunin and jounin, and I don't need some tiny academy student dying out here on my watch. Jounin practice the really scary stuff out here." Her eyes raked over me dismissively.

Frustration boiled up. I could feel Katherine knocking at the back door of my mind, closer than she had been in weeks. "Look, I can't practice the technique I'm doing in the city." I hopped down from the rock. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Mitarashi Anko," the woman said. "Special jounin, so I outrank a brat like you."

"Pretty much everyone outranks me," I said impatiently. _She still hasn't given me an ultimatum,_ I thought. _That's good._ Past the seal, I could almost feel Marcus agreeing with me. It was so frustrating to have all the processed lives locked behind the damn seal. "But I don't see why that means I have to leave."

"And what kind of technique could an academy student be working on that can't be practiced at school?" she asked. She had judged me inadequate, I could tell.

"I'm Uzumaki Mimiru, thanks for asking," I said. "And it-"

I thought for a moment. Was there a way I could turn this into a technique? Or a technique I could make up where the first stage was meditation. But lies usually fell apart - it was better to just never tell anyone anything.

 _Truth is always stranger than fiction,_ echoed a voice that sounded suspiciously like Marcus.

"I'm trying to access my past life so that I will have knowledge of important secrets," I said honestly. "If I can remember everything, then this seal on my head goes away, and I can get away from-." I stopped. Any attention on Umi and I would pay dearly for it later. "From my problems."

Mitarashi-san stared at me for an incredulous minute before bursting out laughing. "Look, I don't care who you are," she said with a smile that was the opposite of reassuring. Like an alligator's smile. "But that's very good! Keep telling stories like that and you'll have a career in espionage, at least."

I glanced back and forth. "So... are you going to make me leave?" I asked.

"Your funeral, kid," she said with a wave. "I'm usually in the area, so I'll just leave you a little warning. You hear any loud crashes or bangs, or smell any weird smells, run as fast as you can. Jounin really test some of their best stuff out here." She raised an eyebrow. "If you live, you might just learn something."

With that, she disappeared in a swirl of leaves and a wisp of smoke, leaving only the haunting image of the nipples I almost saw behind.

Puberty was weird.

I shook my head rapidly to clear those thoughts from my head, and settled back on my rock.

It was so difficult to find the correct pathway into the memory of any life, but once you found that pathway, the past life generally came flooding in. With Marcus and Thomas, it had been writing - they had written their way through every major difficulty, so I had taken up a pen and remembered what it felt like to have the weight of the world in your hands, or to create a new universe for people to inhabit. With Ingrid, it had been astronomy and wayfinding. I had spent three months mapping familiar and unfamiliar constellations and correlating them with directions while remembering her life. WIth Jedidiah, it had been hunting and trapping. As I remembered his mother teaching him how to track a rabbit through the icy snows of winter, I too went ankle-deep in the snow after countless birds and rabbits.

But it was _harder_ with Katherine. She'd had a million and one hobbies but nothing she had done for longer than a year or two. If anything, the defining feature of her life had been a lack of commitment. Always traveling, and running away from anyone who wanted to make a close connection.

I would just have to relive her memories the painful way until I found her _key._

I gritted my teeth, pressed two fingers the seal at my temple to try and calm it, and dove back in.

I spent all day there, ignoring my grumbling stomach, but I made little progress. The flashes of memory I was getting didn't help me to remember what it had been like to _be_ Katherine, but only what she felt at emotionally high points of her life. Still, as the sun faded, I realized that I needed to get back. Not to mention that I was starving. I'd have to pack a lunch tomorrow.

I cracked the door open when I arrived at home, trying to open the door as quietly as I could.

"Finally, back on time," came Umi's voice.

I winced.

"There's mold in the bathroom. Go get rid of it."

I stopped. Had I really pulled it off? She didn't suspect anything?

"Okay," I said quietly and immediately turned to dig under the sink for bleach and a scrubber.

 _I did it!_ I thought triumphantly. _Now I just have to keep it up._ Still, even this much felt like I had won the Nobel prize.

 _Wait._

 _What's the Nobel prize?_

* * *

My success lasted about three days before it all blew up in my face with a distinctly orange explosion.

"Mimi-chan! Is that you, Mimi-chan? MIMI-CHAN! I'M DOWN HERE!"

I looked down. Naruto was working himself into a frenzy down below, jumping up and down to get my attention.

I thought about finishing my hop over the wall, but he had seen me already. I shoved my reluctance off my face and dropped down next to him. "Hey, Naruto-kun," I sighed.

"Where have you _been_!" Naruto accused. "It's been ages and ages since you've been in class! I wanted to die of boredom, and I don't understand whatever Iruka-sensei's been teaching about chakra sensitobitu- sensitubiny-"

I could hear him running out of breath. "Sensitivity?" I asked.

"Yeah, that!" he brightened momentarily before he remembered that he was supposed to be angry. "And you never ever skip class so I was super worried about what happened to you and I almost went to you house but you told me your crazy grandmother was there and I didn't want to make her angry and-"

I burst out laughing. I hadn't expected Naruto to care this deeply about my absence, to be honest. In my head he was always the dearest friend of Sakura and Best Frenemies with Sasuke. But now that I was thinking about it, he hadn't actually exchanged any meaningful conversation with them yet, had he?

"I'm fine, Naruto," I said though giggles. "I just decided to skip school to work on -" I paused. "A super-secret new technique."

The moment that the interest crossed Naruto's face, I knew I had made a horrible mistake. "Can I come with you? What kind of technique? Does it explode people?"

It was so easy to like Naruto, and so easy for him to drive you crazy. "It's a secret, Naruto," I said seriously. "You can't tell anyone."

"But friends aren't supposed to have secrets," he said, stubbornly crossing his arms.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. "Who told you that?" I said.

"I know about friends," he said, his voice dropping.

It was so hard to look at him like that, lip trembling, and not feel terrible. "I'm not keeping it secret from you," I said, an involuntary pit of guilt forming in my stomach at the lie. I kept up the eye contact, though, because lies were obvious when you glanced away.

"But you won't let me watch," he mumbled, scuffing his toe against the ground.

 _He is so young._ I thought. I could feel how hard it was for him to be this open with me, how afraid he had been when the only person who would speak with him stopped coming to class.

"Look, it's really boring," I said. "The beginning stages I just meditate a lot, and I can't do that in class. That's why I'm skipping."

The sadness dropped from his face. "I don't mind! I'm great at working by myself."

I almost let out another laugh at that thought. "You're terrible at being by yourself, Naruto," I said honestly. "But that's okay."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Just because I don't like something doesn't mean I'm bad at it," he shot back.

I held up my hands. "Alright, alright."

Naruto brightened. "So I can come?"

I tapped my chin. "Just for today," I stipulated. "You want to be a great ninja, right?"

"I'm going to be the best ninja there is! I'm gonna be Hokage one day!" he said, punching the air for emphasis. The orange of his jumpsuit somehow intensified. Was that even scientifically possible?

"Then you need to go to class," I said, raising an eyebrow.

He deflated. "Ugh."

In the end, though, I couldn't say no. And it wasn't like I was much better in class than Naruto was - I needed to go to class just as much as he did. And it's not like all his skipping harmed his development in the story I remembered.

 _I remembered?_

* * *

It was exactly as irritating as I expected it to be.

"This is booooring," Naruto groaned, flopping onto his back in the grass.

"Really," I said, trying and failing to keep the 'I-told-you-so' tone from my voice. "Fascinating."

So far, he had run around the grove about nineteen times, climbed every single tree, set three trip-wires, and practiced exactly two kanji. "But you're not doing anything!" he said, flopping down with a huff.

"I'm meditating. Unsuccessfully, because you keep _interrupting_ me," I said.

He immediately shut down, his face closing up. "Sorry."

I regretted my harsh tone immediately. "Sorry I was mean," I said tentatively. Always best to apologize, especially if you did something wrong. "Want to share my lunch?"

Food usually equalled automatic forgiveness, so only a few minutes later Naruto was happily munching away at a rice ball and I had five minutes of peace.

I just couldn't figure out what made Katherine tick - or why this experience of pulling together the separate pieces of Katherine was so incredibly painful. Other lives hadn't been this painful, and their lives had mostly been remarkably more violent than hers. Reliving one of her memories was rarely painless, even when I did it myself.

Gritting my teeth, I tried again.

And again.

And again.

"Let's spar!" came Naruto's voice, but I was too deep in my meditation to really hear him. But his voice pulled me out enough so that I could feel the hardness of the ground under me, and the warmth of the sun touching my face. I could feel the life in every living thing, pulsing and swirling, that the fox had once been a mouse, that Naruto had been another man.

This time, I didn't remember a memory so much as I felt a feeling. I was small, with gossamer fingers and soft blonde hair, and I could feel the sweet strains of the song down into my bones. I could see the small screen on the back of an airline seat, with tiny dancers drawing me into their colorful blue-and-yellow world. I could feel the magic of dreams at my fingertips, as I flew through the clouds, entirely unimpressed by the miracle I was sitting in.

But for the first time, I was separate enough to realize that this was a memory. I wasn't painfully reliving it - Naruto's voice had been enough to remember where I was.

Why hadn't this worked before? I had fallen into visions plenty of times with other people around, but I had never felt as if I could stay afloat in the memory before.

I pulled myself back out experimentally. There was that little tug, little rip that I had grown used to, and no more. "Weird." I said.

"What's weird?" Naruto said, from his position hanging upside down from a branch ahead of me.

"Normally doing this hurts a lot," I said. "But this time it didn't."

"Maybe you just did it right this time!" Naruto said. "You'll get it soon!"

I smiled back. It was impossible not to smile back at Naruto. "Thanks! I hope so."

I got up to stretch. "But if you wanted to spar, you should have gone to class," I said. "I really have to keep working on this."

"My thoughts exactly," came a quiet voice full of hair-raising anger behind me.

My stomach dropped into my toes, and Naruto's face contorted to one of horror and fear.

I turned around very slowly, hoping what I heard wasn't true.

Iruka stood behind me, smiling while somehow actually glowing with red and orange flames flickering behind him.

 _Genjutsu_ , I thought weakly.

"Where have you been, Mimiru-kun." The calmer his voice was, the more terrified I became.

"H-here," I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away in horror. _Wow, he even made his shadow flicker in this illusion._

"Doing _what_ , exactly?" I could hear the rustle of Naruto trying to sneak off behind me.

Truth is better than lies. "Meditating."

"Meditating is more important than _my_ class, then?" Death was near. I knew it. My toes curled as I consciously kept my hands relaxed.

"I have to finish - um, a clan thing by the end of the month," I said. "Or my grandmother will be really angry."

Iruka's head swelled to two- three- no -five times its normal size, and the flames behind him wreathed him in Dante-esque glory. "And is your grandmother scarier than me?" he roared. His head turned. "UZUMAKI NARUTO GET BACK HERE IMMEDIATELY."

I took a few steps back, trembling. "Yes," my mouth said before my mind caught up.

I heard Naruto through the trees. "Yeah right, Iruka-sensei! You'll have to catch me!"

Naruto was crazy fast when he wanted to be, and I barely saw him flicker through the trees, his orange jumpsuit blending in with the flares of light between the trees. At least he was headed back to town.

"IF YOU AREN'T IN CLASS WHEN I GET THERE YOU WILL PAY FOR IT," Iruka-sensei yelled through the trees.

. It was still so terrifying that genjustsu worked inside your mind somehow. I didn't like him in my head. How did you dispel genjutsu again?

I gathered the chakra within myself with a simple half-seal and whispered word, let the chakra spike through my system. Automatically, Iruka looked like my normal, if rather red-faced teacher. I turned to also edge my way into the forest when he wasn't looking, but felt suddenly choked as I skidded backwards into a tree, my collar pinned by something.

"Are you looking for one of these?" came a lazy female voice.

 _Anko,_ I thought. _Damnit, I almost got out, too._

Anko flipped out of the trees, a handful of orange jumpsuit in her fist. "Seems like there are academy brats everywhere these days."

I reached up and yanked the dango stick out of my collar. "Really, Mitarashi-san?" I whined. _How undignified._

Suddenly, Iruka was all smiles and politeness. "Thank you for retrieving my wayward students, -" He paused. "May I know your name?"

Anko grinned flirtatiously, though her flirtation felt like an alligator's smile. "Maybe if you buy me some dango, I'll tell you."

"Mitarashi-san just wants free food, Iruka-sensei," I said. _Ugh. Flirting._

"Yeah!" Naruto agreed, punching the air where he dangled from Anko's fist. Her arm didn't even tremble, and I admired that distantly.

Anko shot me a dry look. "So young, so innocent," she cooed. "Oh, wait - you lived a past life so you should know about these things!" she said, slapping a hand to her cheek in mock surprise.

The condescension grated like nails on a chalkboard. I kept quiet, though.

Iruka frowned his best polite little disapproval frown. "Another day, Mitarashi-san," he said. "I have to get back to my class before my co-teacher is murdered by eleven-year-olds."

She shrugged, and dropped Naruto into a heap on the ground. "Suit yourself. It's an open offer." And once again, she was gone in a whirlwind of leaves.

"She definitely just wants free food," I muttered under my breath. I could see Naruto out of the corner of my eye, sliding his feet millimeter by millimeter toward the edge of the clearing. It almost looked like he wasn't moving. I approved.

Iruka snatched the back of Naruto's and my collars before we could dash into the trees again, though. "Not so fast!"

* * *

After class, which I had felt especially lost in, Iruka-sensei called me and Naruto to his desk.

He assigned Naruto an apology essay, and sat him down at a desk next to Kiba, who was writing an essay about why he shouldn't bite fellow Konoha ninja and grumbling under his breath.

"What were you two thinking?" he said, without any of his previous anger. "You know better than to skip class, Mimiru."

"Naruto skips class all the time," I skillfully misdirected.

"And maybe I should separate you and Naruto. He's obviously a bad influence," he said sharply.

That… wasn't what I wanted. "Sensei, I wouldn't have skipped if it weren't important," I said honestly. "I just thought no one would notice because no one ever gets Naruto when he leaves. And I can't practice at home."

Iruka stopped, and something like guilt flashed across his face. "We go get Naruto," he protested mildly.

"Only if he's making trouble," I pointed out. "I thought if I stayed out of trouble nobody would notice."

"Oh, I noticed," he said. "And bringing Naruto with you outside the city walls - that was incredibly stupid, Mimiru."

I could almost feel my soul shrinking. "I just needed to practice in peace, sensei," I said in a small voice.

"If Mitarashi-san hadn't been keeping an eye on you, you could have been _killed_ ," he said, his voice full of teacherly, well-meaning reproof.

"I'm sorry sensei." I said, my voice quieter.

"And you won't do it again?"

I stayed silent.

"Mimiru," Iruka said sternly. "You will be here, in class tomorrow."

I looked away.

"I will walk you to school tomorrow, if I have to." He paused and looked at me with a calculating look. "Naruto too."

I snapped back to look at him. "You can't!" I said sharply, the panic chasing aside my childish emotions for the moment. "If my grandmother knows -" I paused. I'd always been terrible at lying, and people never really believed children anyway. "Then she will hurt me."

I'd forgotten that adults had power in the adult world, and children were second-class citizens. But get an adult on your side, and you had power. Iruka obviously had a soft heart for children.

It was the first time I had said something that made him stop. "Hurt you how? Training?"

Training was acceptable abuse in a ninja village. "No, sensei. It doesn't help me train at all." I needed to make it clear. "My branch of the clan learns mind techniques." I let that fester in his mind for a moment before I continued. "And if I don't finish my next stage of training, it will get much worse." I made my voice small again, and allowed the (true) fear I felt to show through my eyes.

"If your grandmother is hurting you, you can take it to the civilian council," he said, lowering his voice so that the others in the room couldn't hear.

"The civilian council can't interfere in clan matters," I said. Domestic abuse here was rarely persecuted, anyway. That had been one of my first library requests once I got here. "That's why I've kept Naruto from meeting her," I said quietly. "Since we share a name, she could claim him." _Click._ _Naruto is a soft spot for him._

"And now, another day is gone and I haven't made any progress," the words spilled out of me without my permission. It was always so hard to stop sharing once I got started. "And I _have_ to make progress." _You said too much. He's going to get involved. Shit._

" _You know, Katie, you definitely have foot-in-mouth disease,"_ came the voice of Mom from an echo in my brain.

 _What the hell._

Iruka-sensei regarded me for a solid minute before he spoke again. "Here is what we will do, Mimiru."

I winced.

"Today, you will sit and write an apology essay about how sorry you are for putting yourself and your classmate in danger," he said, swiveling in his chair to pass me a piece of paper. "And then, tomorrow, you will come to school. However, I will allow you to sit and work on your technique in the teacher's lounge for the next month. If I find you outside the city walls again, I _will_ inform your family of your delinquency."

My mouth dropped open wide enough to catch a couple of sparrows. I could feel the little cut of dryness at the corner of my mouth pull ever so slightly. "Really, sensei?" I said, trying not to hope too much.

"And, at the end of the month," he continued, "You will write a report on mental techniques and meditation to prove the academic worth of such an exercise."

I was already nodding. "Yes, sensei," I said politely. "Sorry, sensei."

"Next time, ask for help," Iruka-sensei said wryly. "That's what friends are for.

 _After all this time, maybe I don't know much about friendship after all._ I thought. Even though at least one of my past lives had been in politics, I was pretty terrible at close friendships. To be fair, Marcus' great luck in choosing friends had led to his untimely execution, so perhaps I should be less eager to follow his example.

"Mimiru-kun," Iruka said gently, jostling me out of my reverie. "Go write your essay.

I took the paper from his hand, and settled next to Naruto. _I'm gonna write the best damn essay,_ I thought. _And then get back to work._

A/N: Five of Mimiru's ten lives are of real historical figures. Not always incredibly important or badass people, but historical figures. First reviewer to guess one of the historical lives gets to give me a one-shot prompt of their choice!


	6. Useless

Disclaimer: The reincarnation in this story is not from any one real religion. I borrowed from a bunch and made up a whole lot more.

Trigger warning: brief stalking

Useless

 _I carefully spun around, letting my wide sleeves flutter lightly as the screams echoed around us. "What do you think, Captain?"_

" _Husband, soon," came the gruff voice as his brawny, scarred arm wrapped around my waist. "Anything you ask, my butterfly, shall be yours."_

 _I turned in his arms to face him, so that he could look at the eyes I had spent an hour painting for this moment. "How about a fleet, darling?"_

* * *

Ino wasn't speaking to me, and it had been two weeks. Apparently, she had taken my three days of absence as an affront to her personally. Every time I walked into the classroom, she turned away from me with crossed arms and flipped ponytail.

I felt badly about it, but I didn't have time to solve this particular schoolroom squabble. I'd apologize to her later. However, Ino's newfound disdain had given Sakura a reason to suddenly try and become my new best friend.

"Hello, Mimiru-chan," the pink-haired girl was entirely too happy for the hour of the morning it was. As always, she was coiffed and polished to perfection - how much time did she and Ino spend on their appearance in the morning?

"Hello, Haruno-san," I said politely. We weren't close enough for that sort of familiarity yet.

"I was wondering if you wanted to go to the tea shop after class?" she asked. "It has a great view of the supermarket."

 _So I can watch you stalk Sasuke? I would rather drink cyanide,_ I thought. "As fun as watching the supermarket sounds, I have work to do after class," I said. "Maybe another time?"

"Ooh, how about the weekend? There's the _best_ garden by my house." She clasped her hands in front of her. "My mother will make dinner and her cooking is the best! Oh, please say you'll come."

I stared at her incredulously. "Um."

"I'll take that as a yes!" she squealed. "See you Saturday, at four!"

 _She really creates her own reality, doesn't she._ I shuffled towards the teacher's office, where I should be left alone.

Iruka let me in. "Remember, don't touch anything," he said. "And the cabinets are _securely_ locked, and I will know if you mess with them."

I raised my hands. "Don't worry sensei, I won't touch anything."

The teacher's lounge was an interesting enough place, with its stacks of paperwork nearly touching the ceiling, with kunai casually used as paperweights. There had to be some jutsu involved for balance.

I looked at the unstable rolling chair for a moment, with its squeaking wheels and rusty bolts, and decided against it. _That thing looks like a death trap,_ I thought, touching it with a hesitant hand. As always, the seat actually tipped toward me without turning on its wheels. _How is this thing attached anyway?_

Instead I settled on the floor, tucking myself into the leg space I had found most comfortable below one of the teachers' desks. The wood against my back was cool and human to the touch, and I focused on that sensation as I lulled myself into a trance, using the general hubub from the classroom to keep myself anchored. This was the key to keeping the trances mostly pain-free, but dipping a proverbial foot into the memory pond and not diving all the way in was awfully difficult.

I still wasn't getting a complete sense of _self_ from Katherine's life. _Or in my own life, let's be realistic here._ Still, painless memories were the easiest way to search for her trigger.

* * *

 _Sitting in a classroom was a kind of torture. I stared at the clock and watched the seconds tick by, trying to keep my eyes open. Since first grade, I hadn't been subject to the slavery of school, and now, after ten years…_

 _Sometimes I really regretted cheating enough to get kicked out of homeschooling. Under my breath, I hummed a few bars from "Defying Gravity", singing the lyrics in my head._

" _Katherine! Come up here and solve the question on the board," came the heavily accented voice of my math teacher._

 _I jerked out of my reverie. "Sorry, Miz." I slid out of my chair, acutely aware of all the eyes fixed on me. I wanted to shrink in my chair._

 _I stared at the problem on the board. I hadn't paid attention to this formula in class at all, but I understood enough about how math worked to figure it out anyway. To be fair, I was sure the other guy who was called up didn't understand any more than I did._

 _I had learned my lesson, though, and made sure that it took me a long time to get the right answer. Too fast and I would be a target for bullying again. I had only just escaped that._

* * *

" _Lean against the wall, Kathy," my mother said. "Face-first. If you are breathing correctly to sing, then your stomach should push out and push you off the wall."_

" _Okay, Mommy!" I said cheerfully. I felt so adult. Finally, I could learn to sing pretty like Mommy and Grandma and all my Aunties._

" _Here, Kathy, look." Mommy was leaning against the wall, and I watched her stomach push her off the wall with wide eyes._

" _Wow. Let me try!"_

* * *

The hubbub outside quieted. With a slip in focus, I slid onto the floor, no longer hearing the noises around me.

* * *

" _Hey, baby! Hey, hottie! You gotta come with me, you can't believe what I'm going to do to your pretty little ****" came the strange voice from the corner._

 _My heart was beating so fast I was sure it might beat out of my chest, and strands of hair were sticking to my sweaty cheeks and neck. "I told you to_ go away _," I shouted. "Leave me alone!"_

 _The creep approached me, and I pedaled away as fast as I could. Thank God I was on a bike. The sun beat down like an unforgiving god._

 _But then he was on the next corner._

 _And the next._

 _And the next._

 _Panic exploded inside of me, covering my insides with tiny hot shards of fear. I turned the corner into the metro station, running straight into the arms of the security guard. "I've been followed by some creep for over 100 blocks," I said, finally bursting into hot, sweaty tears._

 _And like a vengeful ghost, he was there again, his ghastly pale cheeks spreading into the slimiest of smiles.. "Sorry, officer, she's my girlfriend, we've been fighting," he said._

" _I don't know him! I've never met him before," I half-screamed, positioning my bicycle in front of me like an impenetrable wall._

" _Call the police," the guard said seriously, staring suspiciously at the man in his raggedy shirt._

 _The man ran._

* * *

"Wake up! Mimi-chan, get up!" Naruto's voice was like a cheese grater to the brain.

I blearily opened my eyes. My throat ached. "Naruto? W-what?" My vision spun into focus, and I realized that half the class was standing over me. "What the hell?"

"You were screaming," came the concerned voice of Iruka-sensei from behind the throng.

"Oh god," I muttered, sitting up to bury my face in my skinny, freckled arms. _This is so embarrassing._ My head pounded with the now-familiar pain of a raw memory. _I always preferred medium-rare. Ha. This is the most embarrassing moment of my current life. I hate everything._

Ino shoved her face in front of mine. "What the hell are you doing, Mimiru-chan?" She began to check me over, like the busybody she was. "Are you hurt?"

"Just my brain," I muttered. _I wish everyone would stop staring at me._

"Are you doing a mind technique?" Ino proclaimed loudly.

My head snapped up. "Uh, um, maybe?" I said. I didn't deeply want to let everyone in on this secret. "It's clan stuff," I defended. That usually shut everything down.

"The Uzumaki are a _clan?_ " came an unidentified shriek from the throng of students, many of whom were losing interest in the local drama and filtering back to their seats.

I cocked my head to the side, genuinely confused. Umi had implied that the Uzumaki were a very influential clan, before they were decimated. "Um, yeah. Of Uzugakure?" I said. "They- um… We were the ruling clan before Uzu was destroyed."

The remaining students were staring at Naruto with a dumbfounded look on their faces. "The dead-last is part of a _clan?_ " came a dry voice from the back of the clan. Sasuke, probably.

Naruto's chest puffed up. "You betcha!" he cheered. "And we do awesome stuff! Like-"

"Naruto," I warned, suddenly panicked. "Clan secrets are secret." _Not that I know a ton of Uzumaki clan secrets anyway, but I'm not sure what I can and can't say..._

"-Like super secret awesome stuff!" he finished. "So eat it, bastards!"

I could practically feel Iruka facepalm behind me.

"I believe it's time to get back to class, bratlings," came Mizuki's voice, laced with annoyance.

"You're not hurt, Mimiru-kun?" Iruka said, once the students began to leave.

"No, this is a side-effect of my terrible meditating skills," I said with a roll of my eyes.

"You need help meditating?" came Ino's voice from behind me. I hadn't realized she was still there. "I can help with that!"

"I don't need help-" I began.

"That's a great idea!" said Iruka, full of sudden, intense cheer. "For your homework, Mimiru, you should go home with Ino and practice meditation. I'm sure it will be great for your report. In fact, I'm making the Yamanaka meditation techniques a mandatory part of your report." He smiled an alligator's smile.

"Clan secrets-" I began.

"It's just meditation, right? I promise we won't ask many questions," Ino said. Her eyes sparkled. "So long as you don't ask too many about ours!"

Apparently I was forgiven. "We?" I said weakly.

"I'm gonna ask my dad to help! There's no reason meditating should hurt so much," she said, voice full of concern.

I looked helplessly around the room. I hadn't meant to get so many people invested in my problems - I was only exposing more people to Umi. There had to be some way to get out of this.

"Uh, only if Naruto can come too," I blurted out in a last-ditch effort.

"Okay, great!" said Ino, her eyes narrowing determinedly after an awkward pause. "You guys can walk with me!'

Naruto? Meditation?

This was going to be a disaster.

* * *

After school, Ino was skipping alongside me and chattering, while determinedly ignoring Naruto behind us. "So, what did Forehead have to say to you this morning?" she said with a dismissive flick of her hand.

I shrugged. "She wants to get tea on Saturday," I said in my blandest voice.

"Are you going to go?" Ino asked, and her voice was underlaid with something both sad and bitter.

"Maybe," I said, kicking a rock. "She seems nice enough."

"I think Sakura-chan is the prettiest girl in the whole class!" Naruto blurted out from behind us.

Ino turned around, her ponytail swinging so wildly that it smacked me across the cheek with an audible snap.

I rubbed my cheek. "Ow," I muttered under my breath. No one heard me.

"You think _Forehead_ is pretty, Uzumaki?" Ino growled. "She's the worst!"

"You take that back!" Naruto said. "She is so the prettiest girl!"

"Naruto," I said dryly. "We are also in your class."

I watched Naruto stop and process. "N-not that you guys aren't pretty-" he stuttered, deflating.

I laughed. "You have a crush on Haruno-san?" I said, dropping back to elbow him in the ribs. "You liiiiiiike her."

Naruto flushed red as a tomato, reaching back to scratch at the nape of his neck. "W-well… yeah! She's so smart!"

Ino glared at me as if I had betrayed her, and I thought fast.

"You know, Ino," I began. "If Haruno-san liked Naruto, then she wouldn't be your love rival anymore." _And you two could be friends again, and I can get out of this awkward friendship tug-of-war…_

Ino looked Naruto up and down, critically. "Sakura will never fall for you when you look like _that_ ," she said critically, with a toss of her head.

"Whaaaaat," said Naruto. "But this jumpsuit is amazing!"

"It gives people headaches, and it clashes with your hair," Ino said firmly, finally skipping ahead.

Naruto half-ran to catch up. "What should I wear?" he begged.

I followed behind, watching in minor shock. What had I just done? They hadn't been friends before, had they?

How much was I changing?

 _Am I that important?_

In Ino's house, her equally sassy and ponytailed father opened the door. "Ino, you've brought…" his eyes wandered to Naruto and narrowed slightly, "Friends?"

"Yes, Daddy," Ino said, flouncing inside. "Mimiru-chan is really bad at meditating."

"Ino, we can't just tell everyone Yamanaka techniques," her father admonished gently.

"Oh, no, Daddy, just basic things. Mimiru's so bad at meditation that she's hurting herself," Ino said, with her best watery puppy eyes.

I watched the tall, noble clan head melt into a soft daughter-induced puddle. "Well, I guess a few basic lessons wouldn't hurt," he said with a smile. "Are you going to introduce your, um, friends?" his eyes snapped to Naruto again.

Why _did_ everyone hate him? It was so hurt so much to remember. Something about… his stomach? But even thinking about that hurt, so I shied away from it.

"Oh, okay! Daddy, this is Uzumaki Mimiru and Uzumaki Naruto," she said, her voice dropping slightly on Naruto. "They're… cousins?"

Ino's dad narrowed his eyes. "So you're the one who caused so much trouble at the gate a few months ago?"

I blushed almost as red as my hair. "Sorry for the trouble."

Ino continued. "Mimiru-chan, Naruto, this is my father, Yamanaka Inoichi, the head of the Yamanaka clan."

I bowed deeply, grabbing Naruto by the nape of his hair and forcing him to bow as well. "Pleasure to meet you, Yamanaka-sama," I said politely. As we straightened, I pulled the hair at the nape of Naruto's neck to remind him to respond too.

"Uhm, _ow!"_ Naruto hissed, and I signaled toward Ino's dad with my eyes. "Uh, nice to meet you, oji-san," he said casually.

I squeezed my eyes closed. I was going to have to give him a lesson on manners. How embarrassing. Today was the worst.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. Why don't you kids run off and get a snack before we start?" Yamanaka-sama said.

"Sounds good!," Ino chirped, and raced off to what I assumed was the kitchen.

Naruto and I followed her at a more sedate pace, though I felt Naruto shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably behind me.

After raiding Ino's fridge and some friendly banter that made Naruto relax a little, we all settled into the Yamanaka meditation room.

It was an odd room, hung with rich, dark curtains on all sides, clipped back with sparkling uncut gemstones to allow plenty of sunlight that showed off the beautiful tatami mat floor scattered with large, comfortable-looking sitting pillows.

We each chose a large sitting pillow, and I snagged the one with a comfortable crushed-velvet paisley pattern. Naruto grabbed the burnt-orange one, of course, while Ino claimed a rich blue one decorated with tiny cherry blossoms.

Yamanaka-sama was already seated, legs folded neatly under him in seiza position. He looked oddly serene, so different from the hyper, affectionate man we had been introduced to earlier.

Naruto fidgeted on his pillow and I fought the urge.

"Well," Yamanaka-sama began. "Ino, why don't you instruct? I'll stop you if you try to tell them anything you shouldn't."

Ino relaxed, and I hadn't realized she had been so nervous about sharing clan secrets. "To begin, you have to get into the right position," she said, folding herself into seiza.

I followed obediently, and, to my surprise, so did Naruto. "Why is this important?" I asked curiously.

"Your mind doesn't just exist in your head, silly," Ino said. "Or else bloodlines that deal with mental stuff wouldn't exist!"

I blinked. "Okay. So… why this?" I asked.

Ino paused. "Um… I don't know." She looked at her father. "Daddy?"

Ino's dad looked at us. "You weren't kidding, Ino-chan," he said. "She really doesn't know anything."

Quietly, my hands instinctively almost curled into fists before I consciously relaxed them and curled my toes behind me instead.

Naruto, though, didn't take criticism so quietly. "Hey! Mimi-chan is working really hard!"

"It's alright, Naruto," I said quietly. "He's not wrong." I turned to him, and swallowed my dislike behind a smile. "Why is seiza important?"

Ino's dad looked me over with a more respectful eye. "Seiza perfectly aligns your chakra pathways for optimal yin chakra usage," he said simply. "Yin chakra is spiritual, and improperly aligned yin chakra is often a huge problem in the beginning. Once you are more advanced and know where your chakra is supposed to flow, you no longer need the position."

Ino paused, then crawled around to look critically at Naruto's feet. "Ugh, Naruto, you have to fold your toes over one another," she said in an annoyed voice, turning around to demonstrate. "Like this."

Naruto gritted his teeth, but, surprisingly, took a cue from me and didn't say anything. "Fine," he said grumpily. "Like this?"

Ino glanced behind him. "Yeah, that's fine," she said.

Naruto brightened. "Really?"

Ino threw him a thumbs-up before settling back on her pillow. "Then, you need to practice clearing your mind."

She threw herself into it with gusto, and Naruto and I exchanged a glance. "With breathing, right?" I said, hoping to trigger a clearer explanation than "practice clearing your mind."

"Yeah, clear it with what, bleach?" Naruto said.

Ino looked at him as if she had just scraped him off the bottom of her standard-issue sandal. "No, not with bleach, _dummy,_ you just practice trying to think about nothing."

"With breathing?" I said again, in a more timid voice. "And there's no reason to call anyone names, Ino-chan." I paused, then pulled my shoulders a little farther together to make myself smaller. "I didn't really understand either."

Again, I could feel Ino's dad look me over with a far more interested eye. Still, he made no move to help Ino teach. I guessed that he wouldn't help unless she asked him to or she led us into something dangerous or wrong.

Ino pinked a little, but I had humbled myself enough in posture that my words didn't come across much like criticism. Still, I could see her growing defensive. "Sorry, then," she said dismissively. "Anyway, if you had let me _finish_ , I would have told you to clear your mind by focusing on your breathing."

I knew that much, so I closed my eyes and started to breathe. Like I remembered from one or two previous lives, I began to count breaths to clear my mind. However, I was pulled back to the present all too quickly.

"You have to close your _eyes,_ du- I mean, Naruto," I heard Ino say sharply.

"Well, you never _said_ to close your eyes!" Naruto shot back.

"It's _obvious,"_ Ino said with a roll of her eyes. "Haven't you ever watched anyone meditate before?"

"No, why would I?" Naruto said. I felt him start to amp up the false bravado that he tended to use whenever anyone pointed out his academic faults. "We never meditated in class or anything!"

I sealed my lips together and tried to focus on my breathing. I was _not_ getting into the middle of this one. _Breathe in, one-two-three, breathe out, one-two-three-four-five-six…_

This _was_ a bit easier - it felt less like I had to wrestle my mind into place.

"Everyone learns to meditate, don't they, Daddy?" I heard Ino say, her tone turning plaintive.

"Not everyone, Ino," Ino's dad said. His voice sounded so much farther away.

And suddenly I was drowning.

* * *

 _It was strangely calm, at the bottom of the pool. I had Conner securely latched in my own thin arms, and I could see the porch lights far away, through the many feet of water. Though I knew how to swim, the two-year-old in my arms didn't. I had gone in after him with all of my five-year-old determination and found that my arms just weren't strong enough to drag him to the surface._

 _As my breath began to run out, the fear started. I couldn't go back up without him, could I? Mommy and Daddy would be so sad. He was strangely limp in my arms, and I made a last abortive effort to drag him up before I decided, as my chest hurt, to try and swim back up. But as I tried to push back up, I couldn't make myself let go of Connor, and my mouth opened reflexively to try and breathe - but no air came._

 _Only water._

 _All the panic flooded in with the water, and I started to thrash. From above, the general hubbub of the party turned into panicked screams, and I heard a muffled splash above me. Strong arms went around me and Connor, and sooner than I expected, I was coughing my lungs up on the side of the pool._

 _Conner_ _giggled next to me, damp curls plastered to his head. He was completely unaffected._

* * *

 _I could hear Conner screaming, and I was bigger now. But the water that had pulled him inexorably toward the waterfall behind Grandma's was too strong for my swimming, for all that I was nine now. But I managed to snag a skinny arm and wedge myself behind a big boulder lodged in the river. With the water doing half the work of pressing us against the rock, I began to scream for hel-_

* * *

 _Suddenly I was in a new place. I didn't remember this place, a wide grassy plain that stretched in gentle swells and dips like the ocean. I was standing next to a well, for some reason, with the dipper touching my lips._

 _I?_

 _I looked down at myself, and realized I was pulled straight from Katherine's memory - blue patterned swimsuit and skinny, soft body included. My golden hair dripped with ice-cold river water, and my hands lifted automatically to squeeze water out of it._

" _Who are you?" came the shocked voice of Ino's dad from behind me._

 _I spun around, still dripping. I looked down at myself, but I could already see the tips of my fingers turning bluish, like light. The blue crawled up my arms and across the rest of my body, turning me from human to some sort of aura. "Um, where am I?" I said._

" _You're…" Ino's dad paused, confusion working its way across his face. He fingered a paper strung hanging in midair from some invisible string. "Behind a seal." As soon as Ino's dad pointed them out, I could only see him though bars as if I was in a cage._

 _I approached the rusted bars, and tried to squeeze through. As I slid through the bars, every part of me that crossed to the other side turned to the now-familiar tanned-and-freckled arms of Kiyo-_

 _Mimiru. Of Mimiru._

 _Soon I was through, and I could feel my familiar curly, tangled braid across my shoulder. "How are you here?" I said._

" _You were choking," Ino's dad said, kneeling so that we were eye level. "And we couldn't wake you. So I had to come in and fetch you."_

" _Why doesn't it hurt?" I said, honestly curious. Whenever Umi came in here, it hurt like I was being flayed alive from the inside._

" _Your grandmother does that to you?" Ino's dad's mouth dropped open in horror._

" _How did you know what I was thinking?" I said, taking a step back from him._

 _He raised an eyebrow and waved vaguely around. "We're in your mind. No secret thoughts here."_

 _I determinedly didn't think about Umi. "Can we get out of here please?"_

" _I'm going to need to touch you to wake you," he said gently. "May I?"_

 _I nodded eagerly, wanting him out of my head as fast as possible. There were so many things he couldn't know-_

 _I felt his fingers on my shoulder, and then I shot into aware-_

* * *

-ness. I blinked awake, seeing rusty orange out of the corner of my eye. "Sorry," I said, sitting up and rubbing my eyes.

"Oh, you're okay!" Ino shrieked, and practically threw herself at me, wrapping wiry arms around me. "You scared me!"

Ino's dad was sitting up across the room. "Well, Ino, it's good you brought her here," he said. "She definitely shouldn't be working on this technique alone."

"I've done it before," I said stubbornly, without thinking. "Nine times."

"Nine times?" Ino's dad said.

I flushed a little. "I'm saying too much."

"And you don't want to ask your grandmother for help, I suppose," Ino's dad said speculatively.

"No," I said firmly.

"But why not?" said Ino. "I mean, if it's a clan thing shouldn't you be trained by your clan?"

"Ino, enough," Ino's dad said. "She has good reasons." His pupil-less eyes re-focused on me. "Let's begin again, and this time do not count your breaths. It's drawing you into your trance too quickly."

We all folded ourselves into seiza again, and breathed.

* * *

A week later, I was better at meditating painlessly and nowhere closer to understanding what made Katherine tick. My deadline hung before me, only hours away.

I wasn't going to be able to make it.

The aura of doom must have hung visibly around me, because Iruka-sensei kindly asked "Is everything alright, Mimiru-kun?" as he led me to the teacher's lounge.

I glanced up at his face and made a decision. "Sensei," I said seriously. "If I am not in class on Monday, don't wait thirty minutes to come find me." I snagged a nearby test.

"You're not supposed to touch-" Iruka-sensei protested.

I snatched a pen as well and turned it over to the blank side and scrawled my address. Umi's address. "This is my address," I said. "If no one answers, go through the second floor window on the left-hand side. It's not trapped."

Iruka-sensei looked at me, his eyes narrowing in concern. "What do you expect to happen?"

"If you can't wake me," I continued without answering, "Take me to the Yamanaka compound. The hospital won't do anything."

"What do you expect to happen this weekend?" Iruka-sensei asked. He used his best I-am-the-adult-authority voice, but it didn't affect me right now.

I smiled thinly. For a moment, I felt the weight of millennia, the pointlessness of life. "Go back to class, sensei."

A/N: I'm glad you guys are liking the story! Does anyone have any theories as to what the key is to understanding Katherine's life? I've been putting the clues in the chapter titles. (And, tbh, once I decided, I went back and changed one or two titles so you might want to look again! =P)


	7. Make Believe You're Brave

Disclaimer: I made up this version of reincarnation.

Trigger Warning: abuse

Make Believe You're Brave

 _The sword in my hand felt like the most natural thing in the world, but I leaned back, heaving the rapier in front of me. "Like this, Monsieur?" I asked, fluttering my eyelashes for maximum effect._

" _You are doing wonderfully, Ma Belle. If you alter your grip like so, then you have the maximum force behind your thrust," Sérranes replied, with a shining smile that made my heart flutter with anticipation._

 _I finally felt_ alive.

* * *

Every step that carried me toward home felt like a shovelful of dirt in my grave. It was hard to keep the bleakness out of my face and eyes, but I straightened my back and forced a neutral expression over my face.

I wondered what would happen. Would she make me wait for days? Would she attack me as soon as I entered through the doorway? How much would it hurt?

The soft glow from the lanterns brightened as the light above dimmed, but I barely saw anything as I walked by. My instincts directed me more than my mind, which is how I found myself standing in front of Naruto's near-empty apartment building.

I stared up at the flapping, unsecured shutters. If I asked, Naruto would allow me to stay. ANBU surely had watch on him - he was important in a way I hadn't been able to remember for the longest time. An attack on me could surely be misconstrued as an attack on him. But how many men would I allow to die because I was afraid of pain? Umi would kill them. She had killed so many before - a few ANBU would be mere blips on her radar. She was harder to kill than a cockroach.

And she would know of Naruto.

Quietly, I turned away, taking the longest, most winding path back to the apartment. I felt the chill distantly, as if it belonged to another person.

 _Why am I so afraid of dying?_ I thought. _After all, I more than anyone know that life doesn't end here._ I looked down at my hands, my short nails and callus-seamed fingers. _But I wouldn't be me. I will never be me again._

There was a rising stone in my throat that let me know exactly what was going to happen, so I frantically looked for a little cranny to curl up in.

There. Up the tree.

Quickly, I scrambled as high up in the branches as I could, curling up tightly in the crook of the branch. _I don't want to die,_ I thought miserably. Strands of my hair caught on the rough bark of the tree as the tears rose, and I wiped them away angrily. _I'm not done yet._ Another tear fell, and I let this one fall. _There was so much I wanted to do. And it will hurt so much._

Silently, I let myself cry until I had no tears left.

After a brisk washing of my face in the ice-cold stream, I felt much better. A good, hard cry was great for that. And for the first time, I felt Katherine stir - not her memories, but herself. Her being.

I froze.

" _My mother always said,"_ came Katherine's voice _, "That singing a cheerful song can help when you have nowhere else to go."_

"What?" I said out loud. "Help how?"

But she slumbered again.

I slammed my fist into the painted wood of the little bridge next to me. "Help _how_ ," I insisted to the empty air.

I heard the _whish_ of shunshin from somewhere above me, and I realized I had managed to scare off someone. Oops.

I stood. Still, if Katherine had bothered to let me know this, I might as well do as she asked. I dug around in the few of Katherine's memories that I could access, and found a song.

"The sun'll come out," I sang hesitantly, in English. "Tomorrow~"

I stood, to help with the singing. Strangely, my heart did feel lighter, less like there was a stone of dread in my chest.

Turning toward the road, I sang all the way to the gate.

"I can't believe that worked," I muttered as I let myself in.

I paused in front of the door, and carefully rearranged my face into one of neutrality - show no fear. Umi could smell fear.

I entered.

She wasn't home. I couldn't feel the ghost of a life she carried around with her like a dog on a leash. I let out a huge sigh of relief and turned toward the kitchen. I had left rice in the rice cooker, and that would be a good-enough dinner with the pickled plums left in the fridge.

Not to mention that with my stomach roiling with acid, it was probably all I could keep down. Mechanically, I prepared the food. Still, without her here, the house still felt a little bit like a prison.

* * *

Umi didn't come back until the sun was just peeking over the horizon. Her slam of the door jostled me from the very light doze I had been in and out of all night. The distinctive thump of her cane was impossible to miss in the near-silence of the early morning.

I rolled over and pretended to sleep to the best of my not-insignificant ability.

"Brat, get down here," came Umi's voice. "I know you're awake."

I kept breathing faux-deeply, allowing a "spontaneous" muscle spasm or two to flicker across my body.

There was silence downstairs.

I silently thanked kunoichi classes for their stealth courses. Who knew learning to pretend to sleep would be so useful?

Slowly, I heard the thump of Umi's cane up the stairs. I could sense her and her ghost standing outside the door, silently observing me.

"Troublesome brat," she muttered, and thumped back down the stairs.

When I finally came downstairs, I was more prepared than I had been - carefully gauging how many frustrated thumps on the floor meant she was in the best mood possible. Did she even sleep last night?

I crept to the bottom of the stairs, as silently as my training had taught me, but Umi sensed me anyway.

"There you are. Wasting the day away, aren't you?" she snapped.

I shrugged to hide my shudder. "I was out late training," I said. "Lost track of time."

"I need you for a task today." The old woman said. "You have succeeded in integrating yourself into the village?"

I swallowed, and allowed myself a small measure of hope. Perhaps she had forgotten the deadline? "I have made a few friends," I allowed. "And I have ingratiated myself with a few shopkeepers. However, this village seems a bit more... xenophobic than others we have lived in." Untrue, but the last name Uzumaki had done enough for the villagers to keep me at an arm's length.

Umi smacked her lips against her teeth. "It will have to do. Can you get into the chuunin-level history scrolls at the library?"

I frowned. "I am not even a shinobi yet, Umi," I said. "And I have not yet made any ninja fr-" I paused. "Well."

Umi raised an impatient eyebrow. "Hm?"

"I may not be able to get into the local library, but perhaps I could gain access to the Yamanaka clan library." I paused, then decided not to give any more information. She didn't need to know which of the Yamanaka I had befriended. "That would also draw less attention."

 _Why doesn't she get it herself?_ I wondered. _She has spent more time 'ingratiating' herself with the villagers than I have._ But with my position as tenuous as it was, I didn't dare ask questions.

"Fine. I need you to look up information on the events surrounding Uzushiogakure's fall," Umi ordered. "There is no information in the civilian library, and I need details on Uzushiogakure and how exactly the communications failed between Uzu and Konoha."

I nodded. "I'll see what I can do." I glanced sideways. "In fact, I will leave _right now,_ " I said cheerily. "Is there anything else you wanted?" I was already shifting in the direction of the door.

"Yes." Umi's suddenly cold voice froze my feet to the ground. "Have you finished synthesizing Katherine?"

I screwed my eyes shut. "She woke up," I said truthfully. "Which means that I have stumbled upon her trigger. It won't take much more." A lie. But mixing truth and lies makes a lie much more palatable.

" _A spoonful of sugar,"_ came Katherine's voice, echoing like she was dreaming. " _Makes the medicine go down."_

With one foot out the door, I went down like a puppet with its strings cut as my brain was set afire.

* * *

I lost track of hours and days, retreating from the minds within my mind as if all of them were threats. From the kind, cool hands of Meera and the snarled threats of Xi, from the gentle cajoling of Jed and Umi's fiery fingers -

I was losing the ability to tell friend from foe, here. I could feel Katherine writhing with me, as the only other personality not safely ensconced behind the seal. I struggled to hold the both of us together, but every time I reached out to her I could only remember more pain.

Then, with a removal as painful as a gunshot wound, it was over.

When my eyes opened, I was still slumped across the floor in front of the doorway. The tatami was digging a ridged pattern into my cheekbone. Every muscle shuddered and burned, even muscles in my head and feet that I didn't know existed. Thinking hurt like my mind had been dipped in acid.

But I was tougher now than I had been a year ago, and, struggling, I stood. Across from me, Umi sat in the fading light with a frown carved into her features. "Is there anything else you expect from me?" I found myself saying, the words flying from my mouth with no permission from me. I felt my body bend at the waist respectfully, but something inside me forcefully stuffed down my rising panic. Had I lost control of my own body?

Umi's mouth dropped open.

"Then I will take my leave," my mouth said, my face still pointed at the floor. I turned, and walked out the door. _What the hell?_ I thought.

" _Calm, Kiyoko,"_ came Marcus' most calming voice. " _I will handle things for a while. Rest. Sleep."_

 _Don't you dare ruin what I have built,_ I hissed at him. _I have worked so hard to live my life, and I will_ not _allow you to take it from me._ I paused. _And Kiyoko is dead._

" _For now, child, you may relax. I cannot do this for long. Just be contented that it is I, and not Xi, who has temporarily escaped the confines of this damnable seal."_

My body shuddered. My own response. Interesting.

" _Rest."_

So I rested.

* * *

Marcus, despite his words, was having quite the struggle to keep this new body moving. It had been so long since he had had feet to walk with, or hands to grab with. He couldn't keep from letting the girl's fingers play over her disaster of hair, marveling at how many tangles could exist on only one head.

The air smelled sweet (smelled!) as springtime, even though it had to be long into autumn now. It had been so long since he had smelled anything.

The girl his spirit was currently inhabiting was a sweet one - too sweet for the lot handed to her. She reminded him so much of his Tullia, especially in moments when she smiled with the corner of her mouth and twisted all the authority figures around her pinky finger with a charming mix of truth and lies. But that damnable old woman had broken her enough that she now took another name, to pretend that trauma could have happened to someone else.

It hadn't, of course. But he would work her into that realization slowly, as he had been all his other little lessons on using words to turn the heart of men any way she pleased.

She was learning well. He would not allow her to make his mistakes, after all she had been through. Failure was a great teacher, and Kiyoko had nine lifetimes of failure to learn from.

He stopped at the dango stand, and offered up her sweetest smile. "One stick, please?" he said, digging through the child's wallet for money. She wouldn't begrudge an old man a taste of something delicious.

Marcus scraped together the coins necessary for the purchase and walked away with a stick stacked with the round dumplings absolutely dripping with sweet syrup. He sank teeth into one, and the dumpling stretched slightly, then snapped away under his teeth. The sauce was sweet and savory on Kiyoko's tongue, an interplay that reminded him of the joys of matching wits over a lively game of _latrunculi._

Marcus settled against a nearby tree to consider his next move. He didn't have enough of the girl's mannerisms memorized to safely impersonate her in front of her friends, so he would have to avoid them. " _What place would neither of those talkative blonds go…"_ he mused. He took another contemplative bite of the dango. It was an interesting enough flavor that he wasn't planning on stopping any time soon.

After another minute, it struck him. " _The library! Of course."_ At that, he politely asked a nearby shopkeeper where the civilian library was, and he headed off towards it.

" _You're wasting your time,"_ came Xi's dismissive voice from behind the seal. " _You barely have twenty-four hours to experience life again, and you're wasting it on a trip to the library."_

" _Books are not useless simply because you never learned to read, Xi,"_ Marcus argued back.

" _But these books will have nothing useful in them,"_ came another voice, almost as dismissive as Xi's. Julie, perhaps. " _It's the civilian library. All they will have is novels, academy textbooks, and philosophy."_

Why were all the women he ever became such harpies?

" _I resent that,"_ came Inseon's voice. " _I am not a harpy."_

Marcus felt a little guilty - Inseon was one of the few behind the seal that it was pleasant to talk to - a truly educated woman. " _My apologies, Inseon,"_ he thought back.

" _Eh, I'll claim harpy,"_ came Ingrid's lazy voice. " _Better a harpy than a lapdog."_

" _I never needed a book to seize power,"_ Xi hissed. " _And you never had true power, or you would not have met your end at the executioner's blade."_

Marcus rolled the girl's eyes, and it was _so_ much fun to be able to express his annoyance verbally. " _Yes, tell me more about how you seized power by marrying your adopted son to become queen of nothing and die in a brothel."_

Xi's anger boiled behind the seal, but Marcus was safely on the other side for once, so he added a little skip to his step.

" _At least I died of old age, you piece of trash,"_ Xi snapped.

" _In a brothel,"_ Marcus sang back, walking down the aisles of books and trying to determine how they were sorted. He always felt calmer around books, as if the scent of them were an elixir that could create peace by scent and touch alone.

Within minutes, he was holed up at one of the tables at the far end of the library, with a tidy stack of philosophy volumes next to him. If he was going to help Kiyoko learn how to talk to these people, he needed to understand how Konoha thought. What truly motivated them. After all, philosophy was the key to understanding everything, from the complexities of the human soul to the purpose of the earth.

And understanding, for all that Xi scoffed, was power.

* * *

"Mimiru-chan? I never expected to see you here!" came a cheerful cry from behind Marcus.

He turned around slowly, to be hit in the face with a vision of _pink_. "Hello…" he racked his brain for her name, "Haruno-san."

"So sad that we didn't get tea a couple of weeks ago," Sakura said, peering over his shoulder at the book. "Ugh, you're reading Laozi? Boring stuff."

Marcus frowned, and inwardly marveled at how many muscles it took to make a the lips turn downward. "It's interesting enough, though I disagree with a great majority of it," he said.

Sakura laughed. "It's just that it's so _old_!" She crossed her arms. "It's not like his ideas still matter."

Marcus shrugged. "Every other philosopher I've read today seems to reference him."

"Wait, really?" Sakura said, tilting her head to the side to take in the stacks of books. "How long have you been here, Mimiru-chan?" she said.

Marcus paused, then glanced out the window. "Since the morning, I think."

"It's nearly dinner time!" Sakura said, a hand flying up to cover her mouth. "Did you eat lunch?"

Marcus shook his head sheepishly. Sakura was probably safe enough - not a good enough friend to Mimiru to know her body language. And he was… hungry. In a sense. "No, I haven't," he said, turning around with a friendly smile. "You said your mother was a good cook?"

"Thank you for having me, Haruno-san," Marcus said as politely as he could while stepping out the door. "The fish was delicious!"

"Oh, I'm glad you liked it, Uzumaki-chan!" Sakura's mother gushed. "Feel free to come around any time! Sakura-chan doesn't bring her friends around often enough anymore."

Sakura flushed. "Okaa-chan!"

Marcus furrowed his- no, her brow. "I'm sure that Sakura was just busy studying," he offered. "She's very diligent.'

Sakura stared at Marcus as if he hung the sun and stars for a moment, mouth dropping open. It was amazing how far a little flattery could go.

"Anyway, I have to be going home," Marcus said smoothly. "See you at school on Monday, Sakura-kun?"

"Sure, Mimiru-chan!" Sakura said with a cheery wave. "Should I walk you home?"

Marcus gave a gentle chuckle. "I should be fine, Sakura-kun." The girl was charming enough, well-read, and fiercely intelligent - he didn't know why Kiyoko avoided the girl so diligently. She needed a lot of work on her physical fitness, but it was often a bad idea to start too early on that account.

Not to mention, she was quite the little fount of information on local legal policies and histories.

* * *

I came to nearly a day later, in the crook of a low-hanging willow with a suspiciously light purse. It was a comfortable enough perch, and I was so enormously relieved not to find myself back at the house. Marcus had that much sense, at least.

Marcus.

Oh, god.

 _Marcus,_ I thought frantically, _What did you do?_

I strained to listen, but got no response. It was so difficult to hear the lives once they were behind the seal - I could only really speak to them if they reached out first. Touching the seal was actually the root of all the pain I had in meditation, according to Ino's dad. If I meditated slowly enough that I could be aware of every step in the process I could avoid it, but it was… difficult. At best.

Still, that didn't stop me from trying. _Marcus! I need to know what you did yesterday!_

Nothing.

I thumped my head against the tree and groaned.

"That doesn't sound healthy," came a lazy voice from under me.

I looked down, to see a particularly unwanted face chewing on dango. "Hello, Mitarashi-san," I said. "Can I help you with anything?"

"Nope! Just heard the sound of despair and came by to drink it in," Mitarashi-san said cheerfully.

"Well, if you've drunk enough despair for the day, you can move on," I said curtly. "I have a lot to do today."

"Yes, most busy people sleep in _trees_." Mitarashi-san picked her teeth with the dango stick.

I decided to ignore her, and slid down from the tree. "Bye, then," I said, with a polite nod of the head that was stopped by a dango stick to the collar.

"I'm not done talking yet," Mitarashi-san said with a terrifyingly toothy smile. "See, I'd like to know why a perfectly charming academy student is sleeping in a tree after her grandmother was the last person to see Elder Utatane alive."

A/N: Sorry for the lateness, this chapter was really hard to get out for some reason... Personal life has been crazy I guess. Enjoy! Also, the contest is still on - the first person to guess any of the 5 historical figures used for Mimiru's lives will get a one-shot of their choosing!


	8. Full of Sorrow Life

Full of Sorrow Life

 _I strolled through the crowded New York streets, the stench of unwashed people and horse dung filling my lungs. "Why did you ask to meet here again?" I said to my walking companion, a young man of about two-and-twenty with a tri-cornered hat balancing jauntily on his head._

" _Well, Jedidiah," he said, his metal-tipped cane making a hearty ring every time it hit the cobblestones. "I need you to find someone."_ _He gave a wry smile. "After all, you're the best."_

* * *

I blinked. "Who is Elder Utatane?" I asked dumbly.

Mitarashi-san's face softened slightly, and I felt less like her eyes were going to drill holes through my face. "She was Hokage-sama's genin teammate, and one of his closest advisors."

I let my face fall into a practiced expression of dismay. "And she's dead?" I asked. "What does my grandmother have to do with this?"

"Like I said, she was the last one to see Elder Utatane alive." She strode over, and pulled the dango stick out of the tree, allowing me to fall to the ground. A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing tightly over an ache that came from sleeping in trees. "Still, you've got to come with me, kid. You were unaccounted for yesterday as well, so we'll have to put you under house arrest until things are sorted out."

I paused. "Will my grandmother be under house arrest too?" I asked, voice carefully calm.

"Yep!" Mitarashi-san said cheerfully. "They won't throw a civilian in the cells until further investigation has been done, but we need to keep an eye on you."

I wilted. "There will be a guard, right?" My voice was disappointed, but hope bubbled up in my chest.

"You won't see them, but they'll be there," Mitarashi-san confirmed.

I eyed here suspiciously as she marched me back toward the district where Umi and I lived. _Why is she telling me so much?_ I thought.

Again, Katherine's voice floated through my mind, as if she were dreaming. " _Ye have not because ye ask not…"_

I shrugged. Nothing to lose by it. "Why are you telling me this much?" I asked, twisting my head awkwardly to look back at her.

"I'm pretty sure you didn't have anything to do with it, kid," Mitarashi-san said. "But I've been a ninja long enough to not trust my feelings."

I was quiet, then, considering. All of the voices were silent now, and I wouldn't be able to speak with anyone except Katherine, still disjointed and delusional, until I meditated. I had no reason to trust her with any extra information, but that didn't mean I couldn't be polite. "Thank you, Mitarashi-san," I said seriously. "I'll try not to disappoint you."

At that, the older woman let out a surprising bark of laughter. "Never thought I'd see the day where little kids spoke like old men!" She let go fo my shoulder to give me a thump on my back that sent me forward a few feet.

I skidded in the dirt, falling back on my rump with a surpised squeak. To the sound of racuous laughter, I scrambled to my feet, blushing.

"I really hope you aren't a traitor, kid," Mitarashi-san said. "If you come out of the other side of this, you can call me Anko-sama."

I rolled my eyes dramatically. "If I never see you again it will be too soon," I muttered.

I ducked under her fist, that was swung slow enough for me to dodge.

* * *

"I'm home, _grandmother,_ " I called through the door, freeing myself from Mitarashi-san's hand as I passed through the door.

"Welcome home, Mimiru- _chan_ ," Umi said with a warm smile as plastic as the - _chan_ at the end of my name. "I worried when I didn't find you this morning."

 _She noticed I wasn't here because breakfast wasn't ready,_ I thought. _Have to account for that next time._ I dropped my head in faux shame. "Sorry, grandmother."

"Don't get into trouble, kid!" said Mitarashi-san. "Duty calls." She gave an informal salute and headed out.

Automatically, Umi's genial expression fell off her face. "Do you know why we are here?" she asked seriously.

"Mitarashi-san said that you were suspected of killing Elder Someone," I said carelessly. "But I'm sure they'll find the real culprit soon." I paused.

"I'm sure you know I didn't kill Elder Utatane," Umi snapped.

 _No, could be perfectly legitimate. She has to know we are under observation._ "I'm sure, grandmother," I said. "Did you have breakfast?"

"No, I've been fending off shinobi all morning," Umi grumped. "Luckily the Uzumaki name has enough weight that they won't throw us immediately in the cells in T&I until we have more information."

I frowned. "I didn't think the Uzumaki name had any weight in Konoha," I said. "Half of the shopkeepers still try to rip us off, and we've been here for months." I turned to the kitchen, just behind me, and knelt down to pull the massive bag of rice to the front of the cabinet and unfurl the top in a crinkle of waxed canvas.

"Not with the _villagers_ , child, with the Hokage." Umi frowned. "Where were you yesterday? I called you to answer me at least three times yesterday."

I paused, dipper half-full of pearly white grains. It was one thing to spout off a ridiculous-sounding truth to to unbelieving older shinobi, but within this conversation anything we said to each other would be taken seriously. "I wasn't… myself, yesterday." I finally said, digging a full cup of rice out of the bag and setting it on the counter. _Why does she keep pushing me to reveal information under observation?_ Valiantly, I kept my hand from shaking.

" _Why are you always such a coward?"_ came Xi's dismissive voice, unwanted and unneded in that moment.

 _Now one of you shows up,_ I thought crossly. _What happened when I was out, Xi?_ I asked. I didn't entirely expect her to be _helpful,_ per say, but sometimes her taunting contained useful information.

" _We're all you, if you really think about it,"_ her voice continued. " _Even me, who all of you hate so much."_

" _I think you're fine,"_ came Julie's laughing voice. " _Seriously, only Marcus hates you."_

" _I don't think a recommendation from the girl who burned down a nunnery to be with her lesbian lover is going to help me here,"_ Xi muttered crossly.

 _Now is_ not _the time, ladies,_ I snapped mentally. _But I do want an explanation later._

Seriously, were all of my past lives incurable blabbermouths?

" _Yes,"_ came a chorus in my mind.

"Not yourself?" Umi said sharply. "What do you mean?"

"One of the family techniques went wrong," I said. "When you were trying to… _help_ me yesterday." I slammed the metal bowl from the rice cooker down in the sink with more force than was necessarily needed. _I can't tell her I let one of them take over voluntarily,_ I thought. _She'll probably decide that the seal is deteriorating and lock me away from them again._

As annoying as they were, they were _me._ Having myself stripped away would be worse than terrifying. I straightened, and dumped the dipper full of rice into the metal bowl and began to fill the bowl with water.

My fingers swirled the rice and water into a violent whirlpool and the water turned cloudy under my hand. "I lost control of _Kasawrin_ briefly. You must have tried to call me then." I felt Katherine perk up sleepily at the mention of her name, but I pulled away from her instinctively, knowing if I let her fully wake then my lie would likely become a truth. I purposefully butchered Katherine's name, letting it sound like a technique.

"You haven't lost control like that in years," Umi said scornfully.

"This… last level has been the worst one," I said unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. "And your… motivation has been counter-productive _at best._ " The last two words were a hiss despite my attempts to control my temper. I tipped the water out of the bowl gently, my hands shaking anger as I tried to keep rice from spilling out with the water. A grain or two still slipped into the sink. I slammed the bowl down again and reached for the faucet. "Which you would know if you had more than two… techniques," I said scornfully. Over the years, I had gathered that this was Umi's third life. "It is more and more difficult every _time!"_ My voice trembled and raised in to a brief shriek.

"Look at me, child," Umi said.

I refused to turn, another thrill of anger racing through me. "I'm washing rice." I swirled the water and the rice violently enough that you could hear the little rice-grains scraping against the side of the pot.

" _Finally, some backbone,"_ I heard Xi say. " _Over rice-washing, though? Really?"_

 _Shut up,_ I snapped mentally.

"You know that I do this because of you, don't you?" Umi said. "If I hadn't found you, and _saved_ you, none of this would have been possible."

"I never asked to be saved," I said. "I never asked you to _wake me up_." I tipped the last of the water into the sink, then filled the measuring cup again with water, and poured it carefully over the rice. "And you never told me what any of this is _for._ " My voice was shaking now, with years of supressed anger and frustration.

Umi scoffed. "If I told you my goals, they would become impossible."

"You've said that before," I said. "It doesn't make me feel better." I slid the rice pot into the cooker and closed the lid with a click. Another button lit up, and I heard the machine whir to life.

"How you _feel_ doesn't matter, brat." I could feel her gaze burning into my back.

I reached up over the refrigerater and pulled down two bags of anchovies and dried seaweed, respectively. The anchovies were hard and pointy, and staring up at me with tiny glazed, dead eyes. I threw a handful into the pot standing on the stove, then pulling the pot over to fill it with water. My hands seemed to be moving independently of my ability to control them as rage blurred the edge of my vision with tears. "Be careful, _grandmother_ ," I said coldly. "You never know who's watching."

Perhaps she didn't know about the ANBU guard?

Could she be telling the truth after all?

It all made my head give great throbs of pain that radiated from my temple down through the rest of my head, like someone was beating on the seal like a drum. Then I saw Umi's hand, curled into a what looked like a fist under her basket. A warning, then.

"You need me," I said, my voice sharp with pain.

"I have more grandchildren," she said cooly. But she was speaking more deeply in code now. _I can make another of you._

"You have another five years to waste training?" I said. "You haven't got much time left, _grandmother._ " ANBU had to be having a great time with this conversation.

"It wouldn't take that long," Umi snapped. "You have always been a failure."

The shallow stab of sadness those words brought surprised me - I thought I was immune to her criticism after so many years of ridicule.

I slid the fillet of salted salmon out of the fridge and carefully arranged it on the small glass baking pan, sliding my fingers along the edge. _I could break it,_ I thought. _And stab her through the eye without her having the time to react._

I caught the sound of the lightest creak of a stair above, and wrote it off. There was at least one ANBU guard here, and was probably having a suspicious creep closer to hear our conversation better.

"Then kill me, and be done with it," I said, sliding the salted salmon into the oven on the top rack to braise. In a smooth motion, I grabbed a slim fillet knife from the knife block turned to face her, holding it to my own throat. "Or should I just do it myself?"

Xi's cackling laugh echoed through my brain, her pleasure at the chaos spreading tingles that allowed me to ignore the pounding in my brain. "If I fall now, I might just slit my own throat," I taunted. "Are you willing to take that risk?"

" _Good gamble. Looks like Marcus hasn't ruined you yet,"_ Xi said.

I could feel Umi's glare bore through my head. I had shown some level of rebellion before, but only a few verbal barbs and attempted poisonings. Never had I threatened my own life. But this was the first hint I had that I was somehow _key_ to the plans she had rather than being her convenient slave. Still, the level of pain in my head dropped dramatically.

"No need to be dramatic," Umi said dismissively.

I carefully set the knife down on the counter and set the timer on the oven, imagining that the _click-click-click_ of the dial was applause.

"That was awesome, _dattebayo!_ ," came an all-too-familiar voice from the stairwell.

" _Naruto!"_ came Ino's voice, and the sound of an impact.

"And you can't be mean to Mimi-chan, _dattebayo,"_ Naruto said, rocketing out of his rather clever hiding place behind a wood-and-paper panel in an explosion of orange. "No one hurts my friends!" Ino followed after, an ashamed hand covering her eyes.

I froze, and my eyes flicked to where Umi sat in her padded chair, every crag of her face shining with victory. "Friends of yours?" she asked, sounding positively cheerful. Her hands, still in her lap under the shallow wicker basket, began forming hand-signs. " _Mimi-chan?"_

Panic flooded my system. " _Tell her who they are. She won't dare harm an heiress,"_ Xi whispered. " _It's good leverage."_

 _I don't want her to know about Naruto,_ I thought, panicked. _She'll just use him up and leave him for dead, just like the other Uzumaki we have come across._

I could feel Xi shrug in my head. " _Well, too bad for him, then. You can still save the girl."_

I was suddenly remembering why Xi drove me crazy. _I'm sorry I ever thought you might be a good person,_ I thought viciously.

" _Never claimed I was,"_ Xi said. " _Nobody is. And you're me, so..."_

"Friends from the Academy," I said, my voice coming out of my through tightly, like a rubber band stretched to the max. "Who are _leaving._ "

"Oh, you can't make them leave now," Umi said, laying on the old-lady sweetness. "The dears will stay for tea, _won't they?"_

"No, they have an appointment," I said, walking quickly over to where Naruto and Ino were locked in a pretty good glaring match and seizing an arm of each of them to march them to the door. "Don't you, guys?" _How did they get past the ANBU guard anyway?_

Ino, though, had a calculating look in her soft blue eyes. "I have some time for tea," she said.

"We're currently under house-arrest," I blurted out. "You don't want to mess with the Hokage's investigation, right?"

"The Hokage is investigating! I'm gonna be Hokage, so it's fine," said Naruto brightly. "And Naruto Uzumaki never leaves a friend behind!" He punched the air triumphantly.

" _Uzumaki_ Naruto?" Umi said, leaning forward with sudden intensity. "Mimi-chan, you didn't tell me that you had met a _cousin_ here in Konoha."

Umi was smiling in Naruto's direction, and her smile said _I need you, but I don't need him. How long do you want him to live?_ Her hand curled again, under the basket and I felt pain spike through my brain like someone was trying to put a senbon through my temple.

Naruto smiled like the sun, and like that, I felt the last of my defense crumble beneath me.

* * *

In the eaves of the house, ANBU Dragonfly arranged himself more comfortably between the covered rafters in the corner of the room, easily blending into the shadows. Anko was right - letting them just talk to each other in a familiar setting was far more revealing than an official investigation ever would have been.

Unknown to the two below, they had already caught Elder Utatane's killer - a mere child in a stolen blank ANBU mask, who had committed suicide when he was caught. That didn't automatically absolve Uzumaki Umi, who had similarly appeared out of thin air only a few months ago and had suspicious timing in visiting the Elder's house, but it did cast doubt on her involvement.

It was beginning to sound like Uzumaki Umi had nothing to do with the death of Elder Utatane. However, from this conversation, it sounded like she was up to something that warranted an investigation. This new interest in the Kyuubi vessel was especially suspicious. He would definitely be taking this back to the Hokage.

A/N: Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner! JigokuShoujosRevenge guessed that Marcus is in fact Marcus Tullius Cicero! He gets a one-shot prompt of his choice. Still four more historical figures to go!


End file.
